Barbara Kyle - [Thornleigh 05]

by Blood Between Queens

  He had watched her that morning as she left Yeavering Hall and had followed her here, already guessing where she was headed. He knew the shire: Wooler held a market every Thursday as it had for centuries. Besides, she was not on foot but rode a donkey though the village was less than three miles from Yeavering Hall and the day was fair, the rolling Cheviot Hills basking in the June sunshine. The donkey was meant to carry home her purchases.

  Twice he had lost sight of her in the noisy market square where oxen bellowed from the livestock pens, and traders at their stalls shouted “What do ye lack?” to passing customers. Christopher welcomed the clamor and bustle, for he had found that in a crowd he could move about unnoticed. Still, he was taking a risk in coming so close to Yeavering. A risk in coming back to England at all. He accepted the danger. For Mary Stuart he would hazard anything. In France, he had hungrily followed the news about her, rejoicing at the report last month that she had escaped from the heretics who had dethroned her and imprisoned her, then despairing to hear she had been routed on the battlefield, and rejoicing again when he heard she had fled for sanctuary in England. Exhilarated and downcast in turns, his turmoil had been as intense as if he’d been fighting and fleeing at her side. The moment he heard she was safe and settled in Carlisle near the Scottish border, he had set sail from France. He had come home with a mission. He would do anything in his power to restore Mary to her throne. Without Mary, he had nothing.

  First, though, he burned with a private need for what this local beauty could give him. He had to get her alone.

  She was moving—gathering up her bought bolts of cloth, making for the edge of the square. Christopher pushed off from the alehouse and strode through the crowd to the draper’s stall.

  “Give me all your ribbons,” he ordered the man as he pulled a purse from his doublet.

  “All, sir?”

  “You heard me.” He tossed a handful of gold coins on the counter. The draper’s eyes went wide at the windfall. Christopher craned to keep his eye on the beautiful girl. “Move, man.”

  He found her beside her donkey, snugging the cloth bolts into panniers slung over the animal’s rump.

  “Going home so soon?”

  Startled, she looked up at him. “God’s teeth, you frighted me.”

  “Fright you? Not I, mistress. I mean to make you smile. Will you share a pot of ale with me?”

  She scoffed. “You’re a bold one, you are. Out of my way. I must be off.”

  “Before you’ve got what you came for?” He slipped the emerald ribbon from his sleeve, the silk cool as it slid past his wrist. “Why leave without what you want?”

  She blinked at him. “You were watching me?”

  “What man could not?” That was the truth. She had green eyes to match the silk, skin like cream, and a body made for a man’s pleasure. “Look, I have more.” He opened the satchel slung over his shoulder to let her see the jumble inside of ribbons, scarves, and braided gold cord for trim.

  “You’re a trader?”

  “Not I, fair one. Merely an admirer. And these pretty things, I can tell, are your heart’s desire.”

  She looked wary, one hand still on the donkey’s back, but glanced at the colorful silky potpourri with a longing she could not hide. “Not for me, for my lady.”

  “Ah, but do keep some for yourself.”

  “I have no coin for any. Worsted and cambric are what I came for, and worsted and cambric are what I’ll go with.”

  “No coin needed. These are yours.” He lifted her hand off the donkey’s back and sank it inside the satchel. Off balance at his abruptness, she stumbled a step closer to him. “Let me go,” she said. “I cannot be seen like this. Talking to a strange man.”

  He held her hand firmly inside the satchel, their fingers together among the ribbons. “It cannot be strange for any man to be smitten by your beauty.”

  She looked at him in earnest, as though struck by something she saw in his face. She did not try to lift her hand. “You’re not from here. Who are you? What’s your name?”

  “Christophe.”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “French.”

  “Aha, I thought you seemed different.” She pulled her hand out of the satchel. “You’re no Englishman, then.”

  “Oh, but I am. Merely accustomed to what they called me in France. And what do people call you?”

  She hesitated, then seemed to decide on taking a chance. “Alice,” she said forthrightly. “Alice Boyer.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar. At Yeavering Hall he’d once had a gardener called Boyer. He supposed this might be the man’s daughter.

  “Christophe, eh?” she said. “Is that your first name or last?”

  Too many questions. “Both.”

  She laughed. “Monsoor Christophe Christophe. What cheek.” She snugged down the flap of the pannier, preparing to go. “I know a tosser when I see one.”

  “Not so, fair one. I was once a gentleman.”

  “Gentleman?” She eyed his doublet of plain brown wool, his dusty breeches. “That’s a lark.”

  “Hard times, sadly, have reduced my state.”

  “You’re a coxcomb, you are. I know your kind.”

  He took hold of her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Hard times, I tell you. I now earn my bread as a clerk. Yet I spent my last sovereign on these fine bits of frippery just to talk to you.”

  She looked him in the eye. “Or you filched them.”

  “They’re yours, if you’ll meet me someplace where we can talk.”

  She looked tempted. Then amused. “Talk, eh? And for talk, all this frippery’s free?”

  “Free as air. Where are you bound?”

  “Yeavering Hall. It’s on the road to—”

  “I know it. Meet me on the way?”

  He rode well ahead of her and reached the hamlet of Kirknewton, sleepy at the best of times and almost silent now with most of its inhabitants at the Wooler market. Christopher brought his horse to a halt beside the stone church named for St. Gregory and looked up at its squat Norman tower. From headstones in the graveyard a spray of starlings fanned up into the sky. He took the satchel of ribbons and went inside. The church was deserted. Striding through the cool air of the nave, he remembered attending the wedding of his chamberlain’s daughter here and standing nearest the altar, lord of most of the wedding guests. A bitter thought. Now, in the garb of a lowly clerk, dusty from his ride from the coast, his appearance might induce a churchwarden to guard the offering box.

  He stopped for a moment in front of the altar and grunted in disgust. Altar? To use the word was sacrilege. It was a mere communion table draped with a plain cloth, the Protestant way. Vile heresy, instituted throughout the country by England’s heretic queen, Elizabeth. The drabness looked all the more shocking to him after kneeling for mass at the magnificent jeweled altars of Catholic France in the years he’d been away.

  He took the steps to the belfry two at a time, and at the top he went straight for the window. It was unglazed, and the wind moaned past the stone casement. A finger of breeze lifted Christopher’s fair hair, which he wore long, chin length, in the French style. He pushed it back from his eyes and gazed across the valley of the River Glen and up the barren mounds of the Cheviot Hills, to the cluster of buildings that hugged the shoulder of a hill, and the grand house at their core: Yeavering Hall. Though small at this distance, the house was a huge and constant presence in his heart. Once it had been his. Now it was in the hands of his enemy, the Thornleighs. Christopher had endured hard years of exile in France, but he prayed to have justice one day. Mary stood next in line for the English throne, since the heretic Elizabeth had no child, and he ached for the day Mary would take her proper place as England’s queen. And when she does I will take back from Thornleigh what is mine.

  A donkey brayed. He looked down. Alice was tying the animal to a beech tree near the church door.

  “Up here,” he called to her.

/>   Turning from the window, he opened the satchel and worked quickly. He hung the colored ribbons and scarves and braided gold cord from every timber of the bell’s casement. A few minutes later, when Alice stepped into the belfry, she beamed at the sight.

  “Lord!” she cried with a laugh. “What a show!”

  “Not more lovely than you.” He draped a crimson silk ribbon as long as his arm around her neck. He stroked her cheek. She pulled back, but only far enough to give the message that she was not so easily had. Not a message that said stop. It was all he needed. He slipped her cotton cap off her head. She gave a small gasp at the liberty. “Try the ribbon in your hair,” he said, tossing her cap aside. He slid his fingers into her hair and brought the auburn waves tumbling down around her shoulders. She bit her lip, but gave him a smile of adventure, then lifted the ribbon in both hands and wound it around her head. Her eyes half closed as she savored its silken feel.

  Christopher glanced at the window, at its view of his property. He had been gone so long, he craved information. “What do you do at Yeavering Hall, enchantress?” He took down a jade-colored scarf and draped it around her shoulders. “You could dance the dance of the seven veils and cast a spell, I warrant.”

  She smiled at his jest. “I’m my lady’s needlewoman.”

  “And who is your lady? I passed through these parts years ago. The Hall belonged then to the Grenvilles. Does it still?”

  “Good Lord, no. Not for many a year. The master was a rank traitor. He’s dead. His property was forfeit.”

  “Who is lord there now?”

  “The son-in-law of a baron.”

  He stared at her, taken aback. Had Thornleigh’s wife died and he’d married a peer’s daughter? “Which baron is that?”

  “Richard, Lord Thornleigh.”

  So, the man had wangled himself a baronetcy. It curdled Christopher’s stomach. His enemy had risen to riches. While I drifted in France, an outcast. “So, this Lord Thornleigh does not live at the Hall?”

  She shook her head as she tugged down another silk ribbon, this one of buttercup yellow. “No, in Hertfordshire.” There was pride in her voice. “I just visited them.”

  That surprised him. “My, you have friends in high places. How so, fair one?”

  “I know his lordship’s ward.”

  He was not interested in her acquaintances, only in Thornleigh. “What is his seat?”

  “What?”

  “His home.”

  “Who?”

  “The baron. In Hertfordshire.”

  “Oh, it’s called Rosethorn House.”

  “And how does he fare? Is he hale?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose.”

  “And his wife?”

  “What a lot of questions. Why do you care about them?”

  “It’s always good to know who is in favor and who is out.”

  She left off examining the yellow ribbon to look at him over her shoulder as though touched with suspicion. He could not let that continue. He kissed her neck to distract her. She let him. He felt her small shiver, one of pleasure. “Well,” she murmured, her tone of pride returning, “they are very much in favor, for they are friends of Her Majesty. That’s right, Queen Elizabeth herself! My friend is their ward, and she has been to court, Justine has. Been in the same room as the Queen!”

  He froze. “Did you say . . . Justine?”

  “Aye. Fancy that, face-to-face with Her Majesty. I’d not be able to get up off my knees for trembling.”

  He was dumbfounded. Could it be his daughter? He had lost track of her—had hoped and assumed that after he had fled she’d been sent to stay with the wife of his late brother in Essex. He had not dared write to his sister-in-law about Justine, for he needed everyone to believe that he had died in the fire. No, he thought now, this must be another girl. Yet Justine was not a name used in England. It had been his wife’s name, French. “This ward of Lord Thornleigh, how came she to befriend you?”

  “Oh, we were friends before she went to him.” She was winding the yellow ribbon around her wrist, round and round, like a bracelet. “We were girls together here, at the Hall. She was the master’s daughter, the traitor I told you of.”

  He felt a clutch of something like panic. It is my Justine! “She . . . lives now with Thornleigh?”

  She nodded. “He took her in, and lucky for her, poor girl, for who would want the penniless child of a traitor? She loves his lordship and the baroness his wife. Loves them like she was their own.”

  Fury flooded him. Damn Thornleigh! The man and his brood had stolen everything from him. Land, property, home. He stole my life. Even stole my daughter!

  Alice was looking at him with a strange light in her eyes. “It’s a funny thing—you’ll think me brainsick—but when you first spoke to me at the market you put me in mind of her.” She shrugged with a smile and tapped the side of her head as though to say she was a lunatic. “Too much sun, I warrant.”

  He wasn’t listening. He was too filled up with rage. A rage that boiled and blistered. It needed out. He snatched the tail of the yellow ribbon she had wound around her wrist and with it he yanked her to him. She gave a small gasp, but she didn’t pull back. He grabbed her other wrist and wrapped the ribbon around it in a flash, then tied the ends together, making silken manacles that bound her hands. She blinked in surprise. And in pleasure? He didn’t know, and cared less. He shoved her against the wall, her back by the window so he could see Yeavering Hall. Mine, was his thought as he pulled up her skirt, his eyes on his stolen house.

  “Hey!” she cried.

  Mine, as he fingered her and felt himself stiffen.

  “Stop that!”

  Mine, as he wrenched his codpiece aside, ready to ram into her as he wanted to ram a blade into Thornleigh’s heart.

  “Ow! That hurts! Stop!”

  He covered her mouth with his hand to keep her quiet and to pin her head against the wall. Her tied-together hands were caught between their bodies, and with his knee he forced her legs apart. She squirmed, but he was stronger.

  She bit his palm. He flinched at the pain and whipped his hand away.

  Breathless, she wrenched her manacled hands up to his face. “Bastard!” Her fingers were rigid to scratch him. He jerked his face aside and she missed. With a grunt of fury she gripped his hair and yanked. His hair came off his head.

  She gasped at his shorn scalp. Blinked at the wig in her hand. Then let it go as if it were diseased. It dropped to the floor like a severed head.

  Horror filled her eyes as she gaped at him. He knew what she was seeing. The burned side of his head that the wig had covered. The red ear shriveled from the flames. The skin, taut and shiny, over half his scalp where no hair grew.

  A breath of shock escaped her. “All your questions . . . about Justine. About the Hall. You’re him. The master!” She shrank back in fear. “Sir Christopher.”

  He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to push the words back into her mouth, push the discovery back into her head, make it disappear. He could not let a report get out that he was alive, and home. As a traitor, he would hang.

  She seemed to realize it at the same moment. She lurched aside, so quickly he was not prepared for it. He lunged for her, but she was already bolting past him, making for the open door. He snatched up his wig from the floor and jammed it back on his head, then grabbed a length of braided gold cord from among the hanging ribbons and went after her, running down the steps. She raced to the bottom, her hair flying.

  He caught up to her as she ran down the nave. He snatched the back of her dress and she staggered to a halt. It unbalanced him and they tumbled together.

  “Let me go!”

  She struggled to her knees, encumbered by her tied-together hands. He got to his feet faster. They were both panting. He whipped the cord around her neck. Her hands flew to the cord to claw it away, but he twisted it tight. She gagged. She flailed at him. Her body thrashed. He twisted the cord tighter. He held it firm,
unyielding, as she struggled.

  She weakened. Then slumped.

  He let go the cord. She fell to the floor with a soft thud. Dead.

  Christopher straightened, catching his breath. He forced his mind onto what mattered. His mission to get to Mary. Had he jeopardized it? He cursed himself for his damnable selfish detour. No time to waste, now. Get to Carlisle, he told himself. To Mary.

  He dragged the girl’s body behind the altar. No one would find it until Sunday. By then, he’d be seventy miles west of here.

  A scrape sounded behind him. He whipped around. No one in the nave. The sound came again, to his right. The vestry door stood ajar. He hurried into the vestry. Across the room the door to the churchyard was open. A figure was running away through the graveyard, round the headstones, running too fast to catch.

  Christopher turned back. Get to Carlisle, he told himself as he walked down the silent nave. His hand wasn’t quite steady as he mounted his horse and turned its head for the western road. He calmed as he trotted on, bending his thoughts to the tasks that lay ahead. He would have justice. For himself. For Mary. For God.

  4

  Will’s Gambit

  It wasn’t the first time that Will Croft, assisting Sir William Cecil, had been in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, but it was definitely the most important. For Will, it was a golden chance to make his mark.

  He had been up for hours making sure he had Sir William’s papers in order, arranged by date, with the most pertinent on top, and going over once again all his own notes about Mary, Queen of Scots. He had arrived an hour early at Whitehall Palace, and now he stood at the lectern desk in a gilded chamber that was part of Elizabeth’s suite, ready to hand Sir William whatever documents, scrolls, letters, or lists he might request. Will was determined to use the crisis with the Scottish queen to prove that he was capable of any commission his patron cared to entrust to him. Sir William was Elizabeth’s closest adviser, and the crisis had made him all the more invaluable to her. Will meant to become invaluable to Sir William because the sooner he could distinguish himself and gain advancement, the sooner he could marry. Justine. The thought of her sent a ripple of excitement through him. Her eager, glowing eyes that night of the fireworks. Her sweetly crooked smile. Her perfume, a scent that rose from her skin as though she’d been lying in a bed of springtime heather.