by Barbara Kyle
Isabel was barely listening. She was trying to keep her mind focused, not let it wander into panic. Why was this nightmare happening? But she found it difficult to think at all. It was as though the workings inside her head were clogged, jammed like the paddles in her father’s fulling ponds, weighted down with too much soggy cloth. She longed to have Martin by her side—to hold her, to keep her from sinking, to make some sense of what was happening. But she had no idea where he was, somewhere down in the county of Kent. It was impossible even to send him a message. She tried to imagine him, marching—somewhere—with Wyatt’s rebel army. But all of that—Wyatt’s stand, her own pledge to act as his go-between with the French Ambassador, Martin’s eager commitment to the cause—all of it now seemed utterly unreal. It was as though Martin existed in some other time and place, some bright plane of happy, hopeful excitement where her mother still moved and smiled.
The last ten hours had been hell itself. Her own voice screaming. The servants shouting and running. Her father wildly trying to stanch the blood from her mother’s wound. Her mother’s blood-soaked bodice, her face still as death.
The parish constable had barged in, fetched immediately by Lord Grenville’s waiting servant. The constable and his men had dragged Isabel’s father out of the room. Two serving men of the household had carried her unconscious mother upstairs while another rode to fetch the doctor. Lord Grenville’s body had been taken away. And finally the servants had stopped running. Mechanically, Isabel did as the doctor instructed to help him as he gouged the metal ball out of her mother’s side, her mother waking with a cry, the pain then driving her under again. Isabel sponged the blood from her mother’s body. The doctor bandaged the wound, then left. And Isabel was alone with her mother, who for hoursslipped in and out of consciousness. Isabel sat by her side all night, stiff with fear, gripping her mother’s fevered hand, terrified of closing her eyes and opening them to find her mother dead.
“Now, mistress,” Mosse said pleasantly, “a word of business, if I may.” He had unlocked the door but stood blocking the way. “When your good father was brought in last night he had nary a coin about him to keep the shackles off. I felt sure he would be good for the fee later—that is, his family would if I may be so bold to say so. But what was I to do? Rules is rules, mistress. Where would we be without ‘em? And the rule is: no payment, no easement of irons. So if you’ve the wherewithal—”
“Yes, yes,” she said, impatient. “How much?”
“Two and six, mistress, and I thank you kindly. I wouldn’t ask a farthing more, though some I know of would. No, two shillings sixpence is the rule here, and Will Mosse abides by rules. We’d be no better than the beasts without ‘em, would we now?”
He pocketed the coins from Isabel and swung open the door. Bowing, he extended his arm to indicate that she should lead the way. Isabel saw that, past the door, the corridor continued on, and the ward, dimly lit, lay at the end. The corridor was narrow. As Mosse followed close behind her he whispered by her cheek, “Your cloak’s a mite wet from the snow, mistress.” His breath smelled of beer. “Uncomfortable, that is. I’d be pleased to carry it off for a quick dry-out by my fire.” His hands touched her shoulders then slid down her front to feel for the edge of her cloak. One hand lightly squeezed her breast. She gasped and twisted around. Mosse grinned innocently. “No charge for a quick dry-out.”
Fury fired her cheeks. “I’ll report you to the sheriff if—”
“Ah! There’s your good father, mistress,” he said brightly, pointing. “There in the corner. I’ll just go on ahead and unlock his irons.” He shuffled forward past her and slipped into the ward.
It was a large room, very crowded. Isabel looked toward the corner the jailer had indicated, but could not see her father. There were too many obstacles, and the light was dim. The ward was divided by three thick stone pillars, and ragged blankets and clothing were strung between the pillars and the walls to form crude partitions. Isabel guessed that one such section was meant to separate the commons from the gentlemen in this forced cohabitation. Many of the prisoners lounged on thin pallets of straw on the floor and stared blank-eyed at the ceiling. Others hunkered in circles, tossing dice amid noisy wagering. Others lay in rag-nested corners, curled in restless sleep. Tallow candles in wall sconces gave off a dingy light. There was one small, high window, without glass, level with the ground of the outside courtyard. Ice crusted its pitted bars.
The smell was foul. Isabel had to press her sleeve over her nose to block out the stench of human waste, mousy straw, and unwashed bodies. Her eyes watered as she passed a smoky cooking fire. Strangely, one corner of the ward had been made magnificent by a gentleman’s feather bed, and by the liveried servant who stood guard with folded arms while his master slept. The prisoners were almost all men, although Isabel stumbled over the bare foot of a boy shivering against one of the flaking pillars. She also caught a glimpse, behind a curtain of thin burlap, of two skinny women sleeping on the stone floor, as still as corpses.
And then she saw her father. He sat with his back against a wall, his knees drawn up, his attention concentrated on something he held in his hands. Isabel saw that this posture was necessary because of the short chains that connected his ankle shackles to his wrists cuffs—the irons that the jailer had spoken of. Mosse was sorting through keys for the one to unlock these manacles. Isabel hurried toward her father.
“I’ll just slip these off, mistress,” Mosse said, “and you can have a pleasant visit with your father. And I’ll send my turnkey down to the taproom to fetch some refreshment foryou, shall I? Finest ale in all Colchester town, ask any gentleman here. Brewed by the tender hand of my own dear wife. And for you, only two shillings a pot.”
He selected a key and unlocked the irons on Thornleigh’s wrists and ankles, one after another, still talking to Isabel. “My apologies for the crowd here, mistress. Sheriff tossed in a baker’s dozen last night, what with this rebellion fright. They say the Spaniards are coming to murder us all in our beds, but I don’t pay much mind to it. Still, it’s got folks worked up. The two over there"—he jerked his head toward a couple of men crouched over a card game—"they were thrown in last night after they butchered a priest, so I’d watch out for them. But the rest of these loafers won’t bother you. Debtors, mostly.” Finished, he stood and gathered in the chains. “So you just stay as long as you please, mistress. Good day to you.” The chains rattled as he swung them over his shoulder and ambled away.
Isabel was staring down at her father. He made no effort to stand now that his chains were removed, though he did slowly stretch out his stiff legs, bent all night from the irons. He glanced up at her, blank faced. Almost immediately he looked back down at the object in his hands, a block of wood roughly whittled. He reached inside his boot and drew out a small knife, one he’d obviously been hiding from Mosse, and began to cut at the wood. Isabel could make out the rudimentary shape of a boat. He had always loved ships. A wire tightened around her heart. Was he carving a ship to carry away his heartache and fear?
“Father,” she whispered. She went down on her knees and laid her arms around his neck. He did not move. Isabel stiffened. Had this vile place already driven off his wits?
He stared at his block of wood and his voice came out flat, sounding hollow. “She’s dead then?”
Isabel drew back and quickly assured him, “No! The doctor came. He took out the ball. But, Father, she’s barely conscious … and so badly hurt. I don’t know if—” Her throat tightened. She couldn’t go on.
He looked at her quickly, a feverish hope in his eyes. “Stay with her. Don’t leave her. Make her recover. Make her.”
She thought she would cry. She forced back the tears. Tears would only hurt him more.
“Sir, I’ve … I’ve brought you this.” She held up the purse of coins. He glanced at it, then went back to whittling with a new intensity. Awkwardly, Isabel tucked the purse into his tunic. She sat back on her heels, feeling adrift.
Her father whittled his wood. His boat.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I heard the servants whispering. Griffith said that if … if mother dies, the priest will make them bury her in unconsecrated ground. I don’t know how they can say that. It’s awful. And they say that you—”
“Unconsecrated?” He suddenly looked at her hard. He spoke as if working out an urgent puzzle. “The Grenvilles must have alerted the Queen. Through Grenville’s daughter. She’s the Queen’s friend.” He added grimly, as though to himself, “So, it’s begun.”
“Begun? What has?” She almost wailed, “Father, why is this happening?”
He gripped her hand. “Isabel, you must get your mother to Antwerp. Get away, now, both of you.”
“Antwerp?” She was stunned. “Good heavens, not while you’re—”
“No discussion. I want you both gone. As soon as you can move her. Understand?”
“But, Father, what happened? What do the Grenvilles—”
“No discussion!” His booming voice made a knot of prisoners turn from their gambling. At his blast of anger, Isabel looked down, silenced. The gamblers went back to their dice. Isabel stared at her father’s hands. They were streaked with dark red stains. And on his cuffs and sleeve were dried red-brown speckles. Blood. She had a queer thought, as though her brain would go no further: I should have brought him clean clothes.
Thornleigh suddenly slumped back against the wall, his energy spent. “Listen to me,” he said flatly. “There’s no hope for me. You’ve got to save your mother and yourself.”
“But you’ll have a trial! What you did was self defense.”
“A fair trial?” He shook his head. “Not a chance. The Grenvilles have half the county judges in their pocket. The Queen will stand by Grenville’s widow.”
“I can hire lawyers—”
“No,” he said, holding up his hand to stop her. “I’m a dead man.” He spoke without intensity, almost without feeling, as if it were another man’s life he was talking about, a stranger’s. Isabel remembered once seeing a man in an alehouse fight who was punched so hard the consciousness had drained from his face, but he kept standing for several moments. That was how her father appeared. Struck, but not yet toppled.
“These are my instructions,” her father was saying. “You will contact Master Legge at the Crane Inn in London. You know him well. Tell him what’s happened, and that I want him to arrange passage for you and your mother to Antwerp. You will clear out all the cash from my strongbox at home. You will pay Legge for your passage, and hire a nurse to accompany your mother, and take the rest of the cash with you. I’ll send orders to Calthrop to sell my property here and send you the proceeds. You will settle in Antwerp. You know our friends there to rely on. You will make a life there, you and Adam—and your mother too, I pray God. And you will forget me. Now go.”
He turned back to his whittling, done with talking.
“But, Father, I can’t leave you!”
“You have no choice. Facts will come out now. About our family’s past.”
She didn’t know what he meant. She felt like she didn’t know anything anymore. She wasn’t sure she would not yet awaken from this nightmare. “But surely there’s some way—”
“There isn’t.” He turned to her, his face softening with a look of tender concern. He lifted his hand and slowly, lovingly ran the back of his fingers down her cheek. “Poor Bel. No wedding … I’m sorry. I’d hoped to see you happy with Martin. See Adam marry his Margriet, too. He loves the girl—” He stopped, his words choked off. Anguish flooded his eyes. “See to your mother, Bel. Please.”He quickly looked down at his wood and tightened his grip on the knife. “Do as I tell you,” he said harshly. “I command it. Now go.” He began whittling, channeling his energy into the wood.
“Father, don’t,” she begged. “Please, talk to me. Please!”
His face registered nothing but concentration on the mindless task of paring off wood chips. Nothing else seemed to matter to him. Not her pleas. Nor his fate.
But Isabel saw that his knife was gouging ugly bites of wood at random, disfiguring the boat. “Go, Bel,” he whispered hoarsely. “For the love of God, go.”
9
Chaos Unleashed
I sabel stood alone outside the village churchyard looking across the waist-high stone wall as the last mourners shuffled out the wicket gate in the far wall. She did not know who the dead person was, but she could not tear her eyes off the fresh grave hacked out of the half-frozen ground. In the breeze, drifts of the dirt mounded beside the grave migrated aimlessly across its surface, and the sight scraped her heart like a claw. Would she soon be standing beside a fresh grave herself, dumb with grief as they lowered her mother into the cold earth?
She shivered. Earlier, on her way to Mistress Farquharson’s cottage, she’d passed the two gravediggers at work here, and the strong late-afternoon sun had forced them to shed their jerkins for their task, but now heavy clouds crowded thedarkening sky, darkening the snow-shrouded tombstones. Was this changeable weather normal?
No, nothing was normal. Nothing was right. Incomprehensible things had happened—were happening. Her mother not yet out of danger, fevered, and clinging to life. Her father cut off from them and in despair. She tried to take comfort in at least having accomplished what he had ordered. She had just left Mistress Farquharson’s cottage, having hired her to attend her mother as nurse. Margery Farquharson, a stout widow with a ready wit despite her hard, solitary life, had nursed Isabel herself through measles and other childhood agues, and Adam through his convalescence after breaking his leg. The whole family loved her like a favorite aunt. Gripping Isabel’s hand beside the cold hearth in her cottage, she’d promised to come this very evening, and to stick with her charge whether in England or in Antwerp, saying with tears in her eyes, “Your good lady mother was ever a true friend to me in my hour of need.” Isabel was vastly relieved, knowing her mother would be in competent and kindly hands. Also, as her father had ordered, she’d sent a message to Master Legge of the Crane Inn in London. But would the old innkeeper really help them in this crisis? Would his friendship with her father stretch that far?
She felt utterly adrift. She found herself gripping the top of the cold stone wall, unable to leave it, this ancient part of the village that was her family’s home. It was just a short walk across the hill to her house. She and Adam had raced it once. He’d got there first, of course, but at their house gate he’d trotted around her in a loop to let her walk through first, and win. A short walk—yet every step she now took away from this wall would separate her forever from home. Each step would feel as wide as a world.
But she must go. She had to see to her mother. And evening was creeping closer. A storm was coming. Already, noisy rooks had alighted on the sanctuary of the church belfry, and other birds were gliding over the steeple on their way home to the safety of the forest. The Grenville’s forest. Isabel shivered again.
Hugging herself, she forced her legs to take the first steps to leave the wall. And leave the village. Leave England. Underfoot, the snow squealed merciless accusations that she was deserting Martin, deserting Sir Thomas Wyatt’s great cause. But what was she to do? She was so alone! She walked on, turning the churchyard corner, still skirting its wall. As she passed the wicket gate she had to fight back the urge to turn back and cling to the wall and never move again.
She heard voices and turned. Two men and an old woman were slowly walking up the path toward the churchyard from the road. The men were supporting the woman as though she would sink if they let her go.
The woman looked up, saw Isabel, and stopped. Isabel recognized her. Lady Maud Grenville. They stared at each other.
There was no way to the road except past Lady Grenville. Isabel forced her feet to move forward. The old woman’s face, coming closer, was as gaunt and bitter as the face of a witch. Isabel felt its hatred stop her like a wall.
Lady Grenville hal
ted an arm’s length away. “Devil’s spawn.” She said it like a curse.
Isabel mustered what dignity she could. “Madam, let me pass. I must go see to my mother.”
“Your mother? A she-devil.” Lady Grenville screwed up her face and spat.
“Mother!” the younger man cried in horror, pulling her back.
The spittle, hot with hate, scalded Isabel’s cheek. With a trembling hand she wiped it off.
“Your mother was a God-cursed heretic!” Lady Grenville cried. “A demon! When God’s servants chained her to the stake, Satan himself came to stamp out the fire beneath her. Satan, saving his own!”
Isabel’s mouth fell open. “Madam, you rave.”
“Rave? Your family’s abominations have destroyed my husband!”
She wrenched free of the two men and stretched up her arms, her fingers rigid as talons. She flew at Isabel, and the talons struck, tearing back the hood that sheltered Isabel’s face and ripping off the headband that held back her hair. The fingers stiffened afresh, the nails poised to rake Isabel’s cheeks.
“Mother, stop!” The younger man wrenched down her arms, and he and the other man restrained her.
Isabel staggered back a step, fumbling at her disarrayed hair, stunned.
Lady Grenville squirmed in the men’s grasp. “You gape,” she sneered at Isabel. “What, did you not know? Idiot! Not know you were the whelp of a she-devil? She carried heretics away on ships, a fiend at work for Satan, her master. Oh, merciful Lord Jesus,” she moaned, rolling her head, “if only they had burned her all those years ago, burned her to a cinder.”
