by Barbara Kyle
He twisted away from her, unnerved. Madre de Dios, there was only one way to get her out of his blood. Kill her father, take the money, and get clear of this country. Today was the twenty-eighth. The rendezvous was for Candlemas. Still a few days left. He would find Thornleigh tomorrow and do it, while she was away.
He heard her behind him as she walked out of his room.
Night torches flared in a Whitehall courtyard as a troop of men-at-arms on patrol marched past below Queen Mary’s window. The noise made the Queen look up from the devotional Book of Hours she was reading. She set the book in her lap and gazed up at her betrothed. Philip of Spain was hanging in glory on her wall, a huge, full-length portrait by the master painter Titian.
Frances Grenville relaxed the needle she had been plying over the embroidery frame standing before her, and followed the Queen’s gaze up to the portrait of the Prince. The painting had been brought by the Emperor’s special envoys after New Year’s, a part of formalizing the betrothal arrangements. Frances knew how much its arrival had meant to the Queen. Mary had never set eyes on the man she was going to marry, at least not in the flesh. She and her council had been embroiled for months in haggling over the terms of the marriage treaty with the Imperial ambassador—articles spelling out Philip’s precise titles in England; the quota of Spanish grandees to receive positions in the royal household; inheritance rights of any children of the marriage so as not to be in conflict with the rights of Don Carlos, Philip’s son from his first marriage; agreement that the English treasury would be wholly under English control—terms that Mary’s council felt would be acceptable to touchy Englishmen. The process, Frances knew, had left the Queen feeling like a commodity in a commercial transaction. It was this portrait that had given her betrothal a human face, had made the man real.
And the Prince did look splendid. Tall, young—at twenty-seven he was a decade younger than Mary—and displaying an air of grave responsibility that perfectly matched Mary’s ideal of a pious ruler.
“It is clearest in the eyes, don’t you agree, Frances?” the Queen asked, still gazing. “A noble soul shines through the eyes.”
“True, my lady.” Frances pushed to the back of her mind the nasty rumors that had reached her. The Prince, they said, had kept a lady, Doña Ana de Osorio, as his mistress since he was eighteen. And Frances could not help thinking that the look in the royal Spaniard’s eyes seemed more arrogant than noble. But then, she told herself with an inward smile, her own concepts of such things were so colored by Edward. Edward—so truly aristocratic in carriage, and his character so generously, so familiarly, English. But she would never utter a word that might mar the Queen’s devotion to the Prince.
“Master Titian is too expert an artist to invent character, my lady,” Frances said with a smile. “He can only paint a noble soul where a noble soul exists.”
Mary nodded with satisfaction and sighed. The women exchanged a contented glance and went back to their sewing and reading as the troop of men-at-arms marched through the courtyard below.
From his chair Edward Sydenham stared at the naked girl across his parlor. She was on her hands and knees in front of his fire, terrified, awaiting his pleasure. But though Edward’s eyes were fixed on her pink flesh, he regarded her almost without seeing her. He was listening for sounds on the stairs outside the door, hoping to hear his steward returning from the prison. Until Palmer reported that Richard Thornleigh had been dispatched, Edward could concentrate on nothing else. Nothing except how Thornleigh’s testimony, if he lived, would blight Edward’s life forever.
He picked up an ivory letter opener on the desk before him and toyed with it, distractedly scraping its point over his thumbtip. The tall clock in the corner ticked, eking out the moments in a rhythm out of harmony with the crackling of the fir logs in the grate. Damn it, where was Palmer?
There was a whimper from the girl. Edward blinked, focusing on her almost for the first time. She was shaking slightly. He studied her. She was perhaps fourteen, plump, and very frightened. Her farrier father had been paid generously to deliver her, and Edward’s chamberlain had instructed her in what to do, and in the consequences to her family if she refused. The chamberlain managed such negotiations deftly. Edward had not been pleased with the man’s predecessor; the fellow had once brought him a girl with her nose bloodied. It had revolted Edward. Violence was the response of peasants.
The girl glanced at him then quickly looked down. But Edward had caught the fear in her eyes. It was usually enough to arouse him. But tonight it was not good enough. He could do nothing until Palmer arrived and set his mind at rest.
The girl was sniffling. A tear dropped onto the Turkish carpet beneath her. Edward noticed that her dirty hair was a mousy brown, not glossily dark as he had remembered it after first spotting her the other day. Another disappointment. He looked away.
At least, he thought, there was beauty in this room. He had meticulously organized the decor after buying the house in the summer, and he was proud of the result. Here in the parlor, illuminated by the pure glow from fine wax tapers burning in the Florentine silver candlesticks, the beauty was almost palpable. Lapis lazuli spirals inlaid among tiles around the hearth glistened like the sunlit waters of the Aegean Sea. Firelight glinted off the million threads of gold, ruby and emerald hues in the costly Flemish tapestries on the wall, and off the painted stars and half-moons artfully spangled across the ceiling. A silver chalice that slowly burned coals laced with fragrant herbs perfumed the room. A shelf displayed three rare books, all exquisitely bound, their leather covers glinting with gilt letters. These books were his most precious objects; gifts from the Emperor Charles himself.
Surveying these surroundings Edward felt a moment of peace. He loved beautiful things. Not just to amass them and horde them, as so many oafish rich men did. He loved beauty for what it represented: a plane of sensibility far above the mire of ordinary life.
He looked back at the girl. She was crying outright now, but was still so terrified that she was trying, quite ineptly, to control it. Edward felt a spark in his loins.
“Come here,” he said.
She stiffened at his command.
“Come,” he repeated.
She started to rise, shaking miserably.
“Stop. Not like that. Crawl.”
She crawled across the carpet.
Edward instructed her. She closed her eyes in revulsion, but she obeyed and shuffled closer between his legs. He sat still as she fumbled at unfastening the red silk ribbons of his codpiece.
A door downstairs creaked open. Edward snatched the girl’s hands to still them, and strained to listen. There were muffled footsteps below. Then an imperious female voice. Edward slumped with disappointment. It was only his housekeeper berating the boy bringing in firewood.
Edgily, he sat back, trying to relax. He motioned for the girl to continue. She closed her eyes more tightly, her tears spilling. Her cold hand reached inside his breeches. Her clumsy, trembling fingers should have been enough. But Edward’s worries would not release him.
Where in God’s name is Palmer?
18
Whit’s Palac
Asatanic clanging of bells assaulted Richard Thornleigh in his sleep. He thrashed his arm at the nightmare—a giant bell that swung over Honor and fired a monstrous cannon, exploding her in flames—and he felt pain like a red-hot brand sear his shoulder.
“Forgot the chain, did you?” a deep, sonorous voice asked.
Thornleigh blinked awake in a sweat. He had indeed forgotten the iron cuff and chain. Forgotten even where he was. Groggily, he sat up from the bunched cloak he’d been using as a pillow. He turned his stiff neck toward the voice and squinted in the sunlight that shafted through a high window. A silver-haired man sat beside him on a wooden platform like a long, narrow bed. One of the man’s wrists, like Thornleigh’s, was cuffed to a chain attached to a ring bolt in the stone wall. Thornleigh glanced around. The small stone room was bare except for
this platform running down the length of one wall. On his other side a boy of about fifteen—an apprentice, by the look of his blue smock—sat huddled in the corner of the platform, shivering in his sleep. Directly across the room from the three of them stood a closed door.
Then Thornleigh remembered. He had been brought to this prison room last night after the long cold ride with the guards; driving snow had kept them a day and night on the road after leaving Colchester jail. It had been late and dark when they’d arrived, and the porter’s torch had only briefly illuminated these two prisoners asleep on the platform as the porter chained Thornleigh between them. Thornleigh had sat in the dark listening to the man’s snoring and the boy’s unconscious whimpering, until he, too, had fallen into a tortured sleep.
The clanging erupted again, startling him.
“Bells of St. Sepulcher’s,” the silver-haired man said ominously.
If Thornleigh had been unsure before of where he was, he was certain now. Everyone who knew London knew what those bells portended. Hard by Newgate prison, St. Sepulcher’s tolling iron voice was the first solemn clamor on a Newgate hanging day.
“Time to make peace with the deity,” the man said. He spoke calmly, resting against the wall. He was cleaning his fingernails with a wood splinter, performing a slow and meticulous job.
“They’re hanging us?” Thornleigh asked.
“Aye, sir. We who are condemned will be carted to Tyburn this morning and hanged.” The man studied his cleaned fingernails as though unperturbed.
Thornleigh took in the information. He felt no fear. He felt little of anything.
The man glanced at him. “An objectionable word, is it not—'hanged'? Puts one in mind of hams, curing. Personally, I have always preferred that striking phrase of the commonfolk: turned off.’ No-nonsense, crisp, and concise. As I hope the hangman’s skills will prove once we reach the fatal tree.”
“Condemned? I wasn’t even tried,” Thornleigh muttered. Not that he cared.
“I was, if you can call that farce of blind prejudice a trial,” the man said with a snort. “The judge was an oaf of the first order. Show me a legal purist who cannot understand the passions of a man in love, sir, and I’ll show you an oaf.” He looked hard at Thornleigh, his eyes narrowing under his bushy silver eyebrows. “Not been tried, did you say?”
Impassively, Thornleigh shook his head.
“Ah, a new recruit. In that case, your stay at Whit’s Palace will commence in earnest once you have expressed to our jailer-host your preference regarding accommodation.”
Thornleigh did not follow this.
The man’s fleshy lips curved into a sardonic smile. “Put simply, sir, I am being hanged, you are not.”
Thornleigh slumped against the wall. He had hoped it was going to be all over today at the gallows. He had no wish to spend weeks awaiting death. But apparently he was not to be so mercifully dispatched. There would be a trial. He could only hope it would come quickly.
The man held up his splinter like a pedagogue with a pointer. “At least—let me be precise here, sir—you are not to be hanged today,” he clarified. “This condemned hold does double duty, you see, as first resting place and last resting place. But in both instances it is merely an ante-chamber to the whipping post or the gallows, after a short stop inside. And the anguish I read in your face—pardon my liberty, sir—but the anguish I see there tells me that it is an act of a felonious nature that has brought you to Whit’s Palace, and no mere misdemeanor for which society would be satisfied you could make amends with a mere whipping. Am I correct?”
Thornleigh nodded bleakly.
“Thank you, sir. I do dislike being proved wrong in my judgment of a man’s character. And, I am proud to say, I make such errors rarely.” He whisked a trace of dirt off the shoulder of his threadbare and faded red doublet. “Ergo, the gallows await you, too. But not today.”
Thornleigh rubbed the back of his stiff neck.
“You may well ask why I make a habit of studying character,” the man went on, evidently wishing that Thornleigh had asked. “Well, sir, I will tell you. It is my business. I am an actor. Jack Ives is the name.” He proudly lifted his craggy profile. “Some in my position might demure at this pregnant juncture and say, ‘I was an actor.’ But the audience at the Tyburn gallows is always a substantial one, and a discriminating one, and as I find myself at this penultimate hour sound of wind and strong of voice I see no reason to deprive them of a final, notable performance. Ergo, sir, I repeat, I am an actor.”
Thornleigh almost smiled. If this was bravado in the face of doom it was a fine display. They were both going to be hanged, and he wished again that he could accompany Jack Ives to the gallows now, no waiting. Then a thought struck. He knew Newgate’s reputation as the most vicious of London’s prisons; perhaps he would meet death quickly here, after all. Good. The quicker the better. Yet something jarred: was he really in Newgate Prison? What had Ives called the place? “What’s Whit’s Palace?” he asked.
“Our affectionate name for Newgate Jail, sir, after a famous former mayor of London, one Richard Whittington. He left money in his will for a new prison to be built, like a triumphal arch, in Newgate. Was that not a fine gesture? After all, he could have left his money to the widows and orphans or to the destitute. But not our Dick. No, he knew that what the people really wanted was a prison!” Ives flicked the wood splinter to the floor as if it were Dick Whittington’s reputation. “May the bugger rot in hell till all Newgate’s inmates join him to plague him with petitions of their innocence. Prison, indeed!” he growled—a formidable, prolonged rumble of disgust. Thornleigh did not doubt that anyone who had dropped a penny in the hat at an inn yard to hear Ives wail out King Priam’s woes had got their money’s worth.
A muffled sound from the boy made Thornleigh turn. The boy was waking up and he blinked, disoriented, as Thornleigh had done. His face was very flushed. He glanced at Thornleigh and Ives and suddenly seemed to recall where he was. “Oh God,” he moaned. His head dropped between his legs. He vomited onto the platform.
Ives snorted. “The Earl of Devon reacted that way to a new play I once presented. An apt response, in truth. The piece was foul.”
Thornleigh watched the boy. “He’s in bad shape.”
“He’s being hanged today, too,” Ives explained. “Just as well. He wouldn’t last much longer. Jail fever.”
Thornleigh noticed that the boy’s flushed face was, indeed, damp with sweat. And tiny black spots speckled his hands, his nose, and his ears. The boy hunched back into the corner and sat dazed, shivering in terror in his own mess. Thornleigh looked away. There was nothing he could do for the lad.
He thought of his own son, then his daughter—and the anchor of sorrow dragged at him again. On the ride to London with the guards he had tried to steer away from the memory of Isabel violated by Mosse as he would steer away from a reef in a storm. Remembering would capsize him into the madness of rage. Instead, he’d thought of her caring for Honor, and of how far across the Channel—how far away from all of this—they would be by now, on their way to safety. He’d assured himself that Honor, so strong, so full of life, would soon recover from her wound, nursed by Isabel and by their Antwerp friends. As for Isabel herself, it had taken all his will to suppress his fury at what Mosse had done to her, but she too was healthy, she too would recover. But this effort had exhausted him. He was drained by his rage and misery of heart. Only the death that was surely coming to him would put an end to it. Death would stop the pain.
“I will tell you something, sir,” the actor said with sudden vigor. “I see death as a blessed end.”
Thornleigh looked at him. Had the man been reading his thoughts?
Ives chuckled humorlessly. “On that point, at least, the cretinous judge agreed with me. But on little else. ‘Retribution for a monstrous homicide’ was his proclamation in sentencing me. Oaf. I ask you, sir, what red-blooded man would not be driven to kill, coming home to find his w
ife in the arms of a villain?”
“You killed your wife?”
Ives looked horrified. “Never, sir! My Joan is the light of my life. Not a moment’s wrangling did we have before that seducing villain made his entrance. A loathsome haberdasher, he was. Joan is young, you see, and has a taste for fripperies. I never minded that. A pretty woman must preen and primp as the nightingale must sing. But these things do cost a pretty penny. And, sadly, an actor’s riches are mostly the laughter and tears his audiences bestow. His purse is usually a sad and shriveled thing. I have a partner whose skill does help alleviate this chronic problem somewhat, however … well, ‘Heaven ‘tis, the actor’s life / But hell on earth for the actor’s wife.'”
Thornleigh understood. “You killed the man you found her with.”
“I drove a pitchfork through his throat, sir. And a moment of sweet satisfaction it was.” He sighed heavily. “But, apparently, only for me. Joan shrieked and locked herself in the dovecote and would not come out for two days. Would not eat. Would not speak. When I could bear it no longer I broke down the door. I was aghast to see the husk she had become. Joan was always a fiery one, but there was no fire left in her. I begged her to come down, to live with me again in sweet harmony. But she screamed that she had never loved me, never would forgive me. She scrambled to the dovecote roof and promised to dash herself to death below if I did not leave her. That’s when the constable came. A puny fellow. I could have knocked the fool down and been halfway to France by the time he had my scent. But I let him lead me away. I knew that if the fire had gone out of Joan, it was I who’d put it out.”
