by Barbara Kyle
He gave her a strange look.
“You know, don’t you,” Isabel pressed on. “Tell me.” She flicked away her tears before they could spill. She sensed that she needed to be strong to hear what was coming.
Legge let go her hand. He looked past her, into the fire. He spoke quietly. “Your mother and father didn’t want you to know.”
Isabel felt a tremor up her backbone. Perhaps she already did know. “Lady Grenville was raving that Mother carried heretics away on ships,” she said, testing. “And that she had been chained to the stake to be burned, but Satan saved her.”
Legge winced. “So,” he whispered, “she’s found out.”
Isabel’s heart missed a beat. “You mean it’s true?”
“It’s true.”
Isabel sank down on the edge of the bed, feeling slightly dizzy.
“At least,” Legge said with a mirthless smile, “true except the part about Satan.” He leaned forward in his chair, arms resting on his knees, as though to keep this talk just between them, letting no servants hear. “It all began before you were born. Your family lived near Norwich then, on a pretty manor called Great Ashwold.” Isabel knew that much. She waited for more.
“Things were different in those days,” Legge went on. “I mean, before old King Henry made his changes in religion. The Church burned people at the stake for heresy. What you don’t know is that your mother fought the Church over it. Oh, she did it all in secret. Organized a kind of smuggling operation for hunted English Protestants. They came to her, the ones who were in danger of being condemned and burned, and she got them onto your father’s ships and sent them to safety in the Netherlands.” He paused. Wind-whipped snow lashed the windows. “But then, shortly after you were born—she’d left you with friends abroad—the Bishop’s men caught her. They tried her for heresy and condemned her.”
“And they were really going to burn her?”
He nodded. “At Smithfield fairground.”
“What? You mean Bartholomew fair?” Isabel couldn’t make the image match her memories. She and her family had spent many happy August afternoons at Smithfield during the annual fairs, laughing at the clowns and jugglers, strolling among the stalls of tinkers’ wares, eating hot mince pies and honey cakes.
“They chained her to the stake,” Legge went on. “There was a big crowd.” He almost smiled. “'Satan’ was your father. When the executioner was about to plunge the torch into the straw beneath Honor, your father appeared on the roof of St. Bartholomew’s church and made a bloodcurdling show as the Devil. He threw down burning pitch onto a wagon of straw. The onlookers panicked and ran to escape the fireballs he was throwing, and in the madness your friends rescued your mother. It was I who hoisted her up onto my horse. And all the while your father railed from the church tower like Satan himself, scattering those fools below. The priests had done their worst to your mother that day but, by God, once up behind me and galloping off on my mount she hung on to me like a burr. That was Honor Thornleigh—unshakable. Your brother played his part, too. Eleven or twelve, he was then. His job was to hold ready the boat by the Thames quay, ready for our escape.”
“And then you all sailed to Antwerp,” Isabel whispered in wonder.
“That’s right. Where you grew up.”
“In ignorance.” She felt a stab of anger. “Why was I never told?”
“They thought it was safer for you not to know. But now …” He stopped, his eye caught by something. “Are those hers?”
Isabel followed his gaze to the little table by the bed. “The books? Yes.”
He stood. “There’s something you should see.”
He moved aside the candle on the table, shifted a couple of volumes, and picked up a small book bound in blue leather. He handed it to Isabel. “She once told me this was her most treasured possession. She said it had changed her life.”
Isabel lifted the book’s two delicate brass clasps, letting the vellum pages flutter open. Their edges looked slightly charred. She moved closer to the candlelight. The fluttering leaves settled at the title page on which were printed the Latin words, de Immortalate. On Immortality. Isabel’s gaze was drawn to a painting below the title, an exquisite rendering of a flower on a winding green stem, its four-petaled blossom a bold, bright blue. She recognized the wildflower, a speedwell. Her throat tightened. “Speedwell blue,” she whispered.
“That’s right.”
The phrase instantly struck an echo in Isabel’s mind of her mother telling the bewitching tale of how Isabel’s father had lost his eye. It had been a sort of family fable. Her mother would say that when she was pregnant with Isabel she had wanted the baby to be born with its father’s eyes, speedwell blue. But, she said, she’d sensed that the blue fire of Thornleigh’s eyes was so rich that it could not be diluted, so she had given him no hint of her longing. Nevertheless, he had guessed her wish. And so, she said, in order to give Isabel the color in his eyes, he had given up one of his own.
“I remember her rocking you on her knee,” Legge said, “and cooing those words to you. But, Bel, the phrase had a life even before that. During the smuggling voyages. The work your mother and father were doing in those days was very dangerous and they had to be careful who they trusted. So they used that phrase—'speedwell blue'—as a password. The right reply was ‘speedwell true.’ If they heard that, they knew they were dealing with friends.”
He looked down at the book in Isabel’s hands. “I have no Latin, but the fellow there writes that immortality of the soul is a fable, too,” he said. “Or so your good mother once explained to me.” He shrugged. “Can’t say I really got the gist of the thing. She doesn’t believe in any church’s teachings, Catholic or Protestant,” he said, then added in quiet puzzlement, “Not even, I think, in God.”
Isabel looked up at him and shook her head in wonder. “You know her far better than I do.”
He nodded with a bleak smile.
“And now,” Isabel said, as understanding chilled her, “Lady Grenville knows too, doesn’t she? Knows everything.”
“Seems she’s found out. I reckon Lord Grenville did as well, and that’s why he raged into your parlor with murder on his mind.”
“And when Frances Grenville heard, she told the Queen. And the Queen hates heretics above all else.”
“Exactly. For your father, there will be no mercy. And now he fears the Queen’s wrath will strike your mother, too. And you. That’s why you have to go. Both of you.”
“Go?” Isabel swallowed. Behind her the wind moaned in the chimney like a creature in captivity. “Oh, Master Legge, I can’t—”
“You can, and you must. I’ve just arranged passage. And you’ve got Mistress Farquharson to nurse your mother. You all three must be on that ship tomorrow night.”
“But … it’s wrong. You must think of some other—”
“No, lass, not I. This is something you have to do. As for me, I must get home. Wyatt, they say, is marching to London. My family needs me. And your mother needs you. Do you understand?”
Isabel felt shame sting her cheeks. She looked into the troubled eyes of her parents’ old friend and realized that he could do no more. She looked down at her mother’s book in her hands and realized something else. It came to her with a sudden calm clarity—she could not abandon the people who were relying on her. Not just her mother. There was Martin. And Wyatt. And her father. A stab of panic followed. How was she to proceed? She looked up again at the old man, seeking direction. He had turned away. Isabel saw that she was utterly alone.
“Yes, Master Legge,” she said as evenly as she could. “I understand.”
Carlos Valverde prowled the jail ward, searching. He was disconcerted to realize how many graybeards the place held.
His first attempt to make contact had been a failure. He had come up to an old man shivering cross-legged in a corner and mouthing a crust of bread, and had asked him if his name was Thornleigh. When the man looked up and blinked, Carlos had c
rouched down and whispered the words as he had been instructed by the visitor. The man had blinked again—then wildly spat at him a mouthful of bread.
The next attempt had begun more promisingly. In the dank cave that served as the jail’s taproom, where Mosse’s lackeys sold Mosse’s swill-like ale to those who could afford it, Carlos had sat on the bench beside a well dressed gray-haired gentleman who was slightly drunk, and asked if his name was Richard Thornleigh. The man had smiled in a friendly way and replied, “What if it is, sir?” But when Carlos tried the words on him, the man had misinterpreted them as the opening to a ballad, and launched into a ribald song about a large-breasted girl lying among daisies.
Carlos had tried four more prospects, with no success.
Outside, the wind moaned past the high barred window in the thick stone wall. Snow gusted through it, sifting down onto the tightly curled bodies beneath, the weakest and sickest, who could not hold on to the better places. After eight days in the jail Carlos was used to the cold; in any case, his quilted leather jerkin and thick boots had always kept him warm enough, even through winter campaigns. The only thing he felt really naked without was his sword. He walked on through the ward as the prisoners began to settle down for sleep. A few had money to buy candles from Mosse, and interspersed among the sprawled bodies and ragged curtains a half dozen flames flickered in the cold drafts.
“Well, if it isn’t the poxy Spaniard.”
“Probably looking for a boy to hump. That’s what Spaniards like.”
The taunts came from the base of a pillar where two men sat watching Carlos go by. He glanced at them: a pot-bellied, bearded man and a younger, wiry one. Priest-killers; so he’d heard. He continued on, used to the insults of Englishmen. Especially cobardes like those two who hadn’t the courage to face him. If one of them ever did, the garrote tucked inside his jerkin would do for them as well as for Richard Thornleigh.
If he ever found Thornleigh.
He passed the turnkey making his evening rounds with a lantern, and he realized he hadn’t much time left. Not if he wanted to get the job done tonight. And he did, very much; he could be hauled out to the hangman at any time, tomorrow morning even. He had to accomplish this tonight. He felt a jolt of hope that was almost painful. The visitor’s terms had been clear and concise: an immediate, full pardon once the job was done—the visitor swore that his employer had the highest connections—then a hundred pounds to be paid Carlos at a rendezvous at London’s Blue Boar Tavern in a week, on Candlemas Night. All Carlos had to do was bring proof of Thornleigh’s death. He still could hardly believe the immensity of the offer. A hundred pounds! With that he could get out of this God-cursed country and back to the Continent and live indefinitely until some soldiering work turned up. Suddenly aware of what he had been reduced to, bitterness rose in his throat. Eight days ago he had owned three hundred and thirty acres of land, a manor house, and lordship over twenty-one farming tenants!
He clamped down the galling memory. First things first, he told himself. And that meant earning his freedom from the gallows.
But, looking around, he wondered how. The only description the visitor had been able to give was that the man Carlos was to kill was in his fifties, and there weren’t many old men left that he hadn’t already approached.
Then he saw another one. Sitting on the floor against a wall in the shadows, whittling a lump of wood.
Carlos approached and stood over him. “Richard Thornleigh?”
The man neither glanced up nor gave any word of assent. He just kept whittling.
Carlos sat down beside him in the shadows. He reached into his jerkin and touched the coiled garrote. From beside it he drew out a chunk of dried apple he’d been saving. He tore it in two and offered one half to the man. The man ignored him.
Carlos shoved both halves of apple into his mouth. He looked down at the wood in the man’s hands. It looked something like a boat. Carlos inclined his head toward the man and said, “I bring a message.”
No response.
Carlos watched the turnkey amble past a pillar, coming closer, and he felt a pang of anxiety. Once the turnkey left for the night and the candles were out it would be difficult to distinguish faces, almost impossible to search any further. This man had to be the one. He tried again. Leaning close he whispered, “Speedwell blue.”
The man’s hand slipped and his knife gouged the wood, marring the boat. He lifted his head and looked at Carlos. Carlos saw that he had only one good eye. But he felt the strength of its beam boring into him. He almost hoped this was not the man he sought after all. He’d prefer one of the weaker ones.
“What did you say?”
Carlos repeated it. “Speedwell blue.”
Surprise trembled over the man’s features. For a long moment he said nothing. Then he murmured in wondering disbelief, “Speedwell true.”
Carlos relaxed. He had found his man.
“Who are you?” Thornleigh asked.
“A friend.”
“But … I’ve never seen you before. Why do you come to me with this?”
“I am here for murder, like you. No hope of escaping the hangman. Until tonight. A man visited me. Told me to use those words to find you. Said only you would give the right answer.” The man had also assured him that the words would lure Thornleigh into trusting him. But Thornleigh looked intelligent and wary. More explanation was necessary. “The visitor promised to come back with money for me,” Carlos lied, “so I can buy off Mosse and get out of here.”
“I see. But … what does this mean? The password. Is help coming?”
Carlos hesitated, but only for a moment. “That is right.”
“But who? There’s no one left. Unless …” He paused. “Is it my old friend Legge? Leonard Legge?”
Carlos shrugged his ignorance. “I am only the messenger. I was told to find you and get you to the taproom. The rest, I know nothing about.”
“The taproom?”
Carlos nodded. The taproom was situated between the far end of the commons’ ward and the now unused gentlemen’s ward, both of which had free access to it. It was off-limits at night; Mosse wanted no one sleeping near his precious kegs of ale. So Carlos knew it would be empty. True, he could do the job out here, but Thornleigh looked strong; there was no guarantee he would die without a scuffle, drawing the attention of some prisoners, and that could lead to complications. Carlos saw no need to take that risk.
Thornleigh looked lost. “But I don’t see—”
Carlos held up a warning hand to silence him, with a nod at the approaching turnkey. He and Thornleigh watched the turnkey as he slowly passed by them, swinging his lantern. The turnkey reached a prisoner under the window where the two talked in low voices. “When he leaves,” Carlos whispered, “follow me.”
Thornleigh said nothing. Carlos looked at him, suddenly anxious again. He had seen resignation like that on the faces of broken men on the battlefield when they knew their wounds were too bad to heal. Was Thornleigh that kind? Had he given up? Would he not even go to the taproom? Carlos had not anticipated that. Well, he thought, hope might get him to move. “I think your friends are coming to the taproom for you, through the other ward,” he said. When Thornleigh still said nothing, Carlos added pointedly, making it clear he meant it as a threat, “You may not want to live, amigo, but I do.”
Thornleigh went back to his whittling. But Carlos noticed that his hands were not quite steady. He also noticed that Thornleigh wore a ring on his forefinger, a signet seal of some kind of tree. Perfect, he thought. The proof to take to the Blue Boar. The finger with the ring.
They waited. The turnkey finally left the ward. Carlos heard the echoing slam of the grilled door in the corridor that led to the stairs. Then, except for some prisoners’ coughing, there was silence.
Carlos turned to Thornleigh. “Come.”
They started through the darkened ward. All but two candles had been extinguished. They felt their way slowly past the sprawled bo
dies and hanging obstacles. Carlos, in front, saw ahead the mouth of the narrow corridor that sloped down to the taproom cave. The corridor was completely dark.
“Go on,” Carlos said to Thornleigh as they approached the entrance. “I will watch our rear.”
Thornleigh started toward the blackness. Carlos reached into his jerkin for the garrote. One moment’s work, and then he could be free. He began to follow Thornleigh.
A blow like a horse’s hoof smashed the back of Carlos’s neck. He toppled. He lay sprawled face-down, blind, paralyzed, unable to gasp breath. A cannon ball knee rammed his back, grinding his hip bones into the stone floor, forcing out what air was left in him. “God-rotting Spaniard!” a voice growled. Hands wrenched back Carlos’s head, then smashed his forehead down on the floor. His eyebrow split. Fire exploded in his skull. “No, use this,” another voice said. The cannon ball lifted from Carlos’s back. His body, like a stretched bellows, helplessly sucked in air and the floor’s dirt.
He heard a loud thud above him and an “Oof!” Boots scuffled by his face. He spat out dirt, found he could move and see, and rolled over on his back. His brain cleared. To his left he saw that Thornleigh had plowed a bearded man against the wall. To his right another man was on his knees, scrabbling in the dark for something on the floor. Carlos saw what the man was searching for—a length of woolen hose bulging with a rock. He suddenly understood. The other man had landed him with this bludgeon and had been about to bash his skull with it, but had dropped it under Thornleigh’s attack. And Carlos recognized both men now. The priest-killers.
Carlos sprang to his feet. The man on his knees found the bludgeon and snatched it up. Carlos kicked it from his hands. Defenseless, the man glanced up in panic. Carlos kicked his face, cracking bone. The man reeled backward, blood spurting from his nose.
