by Barbara Kyle
The guard handed back the papers. “Aye, sir. Easter is a blessed time.”
Adam touched his cap to him. Maybe they were blessed. No inspection.
He opened the door. They’d made it inside the Exchequer office.
The master teller, Peter Forbes, was alone, pacing in front of the long counting table. His sallow face and soft hands proclaimed him worlds apart from Adam’s sea-weathered crewmen. “You’re late,” Forbes said in a frightened whisper.
“No, sir,” Adam said. “Perhaps you were early.”
“Shhh, keep your voice down,” Forbes said, fumbling for keys on a ring at his belt. It seemed to Adam that whispering was a sure way to arouse suspicion.
Forbes unlocked a door and Adam and the crew followed him into a compact room with one small, barred window set high in the wall. There was a counting table, and behind it a wall with pigeonholes bristling with scrolls. Another wall was lined with shelves stocked with identical wooden, iron-banded coffers with domed lids. Each was about two feet square and a foot high, small enough for one man to lift. Each had a thick iron lock.
Forbes closed the door as Adam and his men slung their heavy loads off their shoulders. Forbes hurriedly unlocked several caskets. “Now be quick, for God’s sake,” he whispered. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead.
Adam’s men gaped at the massed silver bullion. “How much do you reckon is twenty thousand, sir?” Jack Curry asked him.
Adam said wryly, “Whatever we can carry, Jack.”
“Four coffers,” Forbes answered, wiping sweat from his upper lip. “Now hurry!”
Adam and his men emptied caskets, dumping the silver coins into heaps on the table. Then they upended the heavy leather packs over the empty caskets and poured out the contents of pebbles and sand. Adam scattered a layer of coins on top, then shut the lids and relocked them, and his men hefted the caskets back onto the shelves.
Adam counted out the teller’s cut of the bullion and shoveled it into a separate, smaller leather pack. Forbes greedily watched every single coin drop in, and then looked up, suspicious. “Let me count it,” he said.
Adam didn’t like Forbes’s inconsistency. A moment ago the man had been hell-bent to get this over with as fast as possible. He held out the pack to him. “Take it right now if you want to be sure.”
Forbes looked horrified. “Good God, no. They could find it on me.”
“Nobody’s going to be looking. Not if you sit tight.”
“No, you idiot. Stick to the plan. Send it to the address I gave you, in Amsterdam.”
Adam bit his tongue. He couldn’t waste time trading insults. “As you wish.”
He and his men set to work scooping the bullion from the table and filling the pouches hidden inside their clothes. They stuffed coins into the front pouches until they swelled like beer bellies, and into long narrow ones down their thighs, then helped each other fill the pouches at the small of their backs. When they were done and had rearranged their clothes, Adam took a few steps to test the weight. It was hard to walk like he wasn’t laden down with an anchor fore and aft. He caught the dismay in his men’s eyes as they, too, realized the challenge.
He gave Jack Curry’s arm an encouraging slap. “It’ll build muscle, Jack. Don’t worry, we’ll have this load halfway to France before they know it’s gone. Then you can buy your wife a fine new Easter gown.”
The men managed smiles.
“Come away now!” Forbes said in a fierce whisper. “It’s my neck if you’re caught.”
But ours first, Adam thought. “Ready?” he asked the others.
“Aye, sir,” they said.
Forbes escorted them out through the antechamber, where he sat down at the counting table and set to looking busy at scribbling in his ledger. The plan, once they were gone, was for him to continue at his desk, then lock up a couple of hours earlier than usual and tell the guards he was going to church. Attending mass today was the law, after all. But instead of praying he would be leaving England this evening on a ship bound for Amsterdam.
Adam opened the outer door. The two guards were talking and stepped apart. Adam couldn’t let them get a good look at him and his crew. Wishing them a happy Easter, he beckoned to his counterfeit soldiers down the corridor. Roger Mitford immediately marched his men toward him, and Adam quickly ushered his crewmen out so that they were swallowed up by the soldiers. They all marched off together down the corridor.
Adam’s back muscles strained to counter the ballast around his stomach, and his legs were so heavily weighted that each step made him breathe harder. From the corner of his eye he saw the others’ tight-lipped efforts to manage their burdens, too. Their exertion seemed so obvious, he half expected to hear the captain yell after them, “Halt!”
But no shout came. They marched out of the palace and down the stone steps into the heat of the day. Adam led them into the shade beside the stairs, where a vine-covered trellis masked them. He turned to Roger’s friends. They were a motley mix of young gentlemen—a couple of goldsmiths like Roger, an Oxford don, two lawyers—but they had acted their military parts well. “Good fellows. Off with you now. Roger, you’re with us.”
“Godspeed, Master Thornleigh,” one said.
“And to you. When next we meet, we’ll drink a toast to our fair new queen.” They grinned, and as he watched them march away Adam allowed himself a stirring thought of Elizabeth, beaming as she thanked them all, and saving a special, warm smile for him.
Roger stayed, pulling off his breastplate and helmet as planned and ditching them. He, too, was no soldier, but Adam was glad of such a committed lieutenant. They shared a dedication to Dudley’s rebellion. Roger had lost his father to the Queen’s cruel oppression. Adam was bent on saving his own father from her.
Now, he had to get his men to the palace wharf where the skiff would be waiting. Not everyone in Westminster’s sprawling precincts had gone to church yet, and he and Roger and the crewmen passed among the scattered courtiers and servants traversing the courtyard. For a moment Adam felt relieved to blend in, not be so exposed. But he realized that it was a false comfort. If an alarm were raised from the palace they would be surrounded, easy to capture.
He decided a detour would be wise. He turned down a narrow alley hemmed in by stone walls. It snaked around by the kitchens. The roundabout route would take them a little longer, but it was empty of people.
“Adam,” Roger said, “he’s coming after us.”
Adam turned. The teller, Forbes, was running toward them. He was whey-faced and out of breath when he reached them, and Adam feared the worst. “Trouble?” he asked.
Forbes shook his head between gulping frantic breaths. “No…no trouble.”
What nonsense was this? “Then go back. You’ll draw them after us.”
“I want my money. Now!” He looked wild-eyed with fear.
Adam saw that it was alarming his men. He had to satisfy the bastard. He tugged open his doublet and shirt and dug into the belly-pouch for two big handfuls of coins. “Here,” he said, handing over the money. “Now get back to your desk. Act like nothing’s amiss and we’ll all be fine.”
“That’s not enough. Not nearly what we agreed!”
Damn his eyes, it was probably far more. “We’ll settle accounts later, man. Now go.”
“You can’t cheat me!” Forbes lunged for Adam’s waist and pawed out handfuls of coins. They spilled out and fell clattering on the cobbles.
A window shutter above them banged open. A woman’s voice called, “Susan? Is that you?”
Adam shoved Forbes backward against the stone wall. Roger and the men shrank back beside them.
“Susan?”
Adam looked up at the window. He couldn’t see anyone. The window casement jutted out, so anyone up there couldn’t see him and his men, either, squeezed right up against the wall. He looked down at the bright coins scattered over the cobbles. He couldn’t leave the money there. It was clear evidence—and a trail. He l
owered himself, awkward under his burden, and began to pick up coins.
“Mine!” Forbes cried. “Leave them! They’re mine!”
“Roger, shut him up.”
Roger clamped one hand over the man’s mouth. Bending his other arm against his chest he pushed him back, pinning him to the wall. They stood face-to-face, Forbes snorting breaths of fear and fury.
“Susan! You get up here with that cream or I’ll skin your worthless hide.”
Grabbing coins, Adam didn’t see the rapier flash out in Forbes’s hand. Even when he heard Roger’s surprised gasp he didn’t realize what had happened. Not until Roger clutched his side and Adam looked up to see blood seeping through Roger’s fingers. But he still pinned Forbes against the wall with his other arm.
Forbes raised his blood-smeared blade and slashed Roger’s face, slicing his cheek.
Adam jumped up, pulling his own dagger. Roger still hadn’t let the man go and Forbes lifted his rapier, ready to stab it into Roger’s heart.
Adam lunged. His dagger slashed Forbes’s throat. Blood pulsed out, spattering Roger. Adam jerked Roger clear.
Forbes gagged, clutching his throat. Eyes bulging, he slumped against the wall and slid down it. He collapsed on the ground, dead. Adam and the others stared at the blood pooling around the coins. Roger swayed in Adam’s grip. Blood trickled down his cheek.
“Hoy! What’s going on down there?” the woman called from above.
Adam fumbled his dagger back into his belt. “To the wharf,” he whispered to the others. He threw an arm around Roger and pulled him down the alley.
They all moved as fast as they could under the burdens strapped to them. Adam felt shaky, what with Forbes’s blood on his hand and his fear that soldiers would soon be after them. He told himself that brawls were common around here, and so were palace rats—robbers who infested the precincts. Whoever found Forbes’s corpse surrounded by coins would chalk it up to a fight over money. Just before they broke out of the alley he pulled off his doublet and threw it around Roger to mask the blood that soaked his side. One of the other men had a handkerchief and he cleaned the blood off Roger’s face as best he could.
They slowed down, panting, as they reached the palace wharf. A few gentlemen stood haggling with oarsmen whose wherries nudged the water stairs. Servants unloaded hogsheads of beer and crates of cabbages from a dirty barge. Adam and his men halted, catching their breath, trying to appear calm, though Adam was soaked with sweat and he could see it dripping down the faces of the others. Roger’s gashed face was gray. Adam held him close and scanned the boats, looking for John Daniels in the skiff from the Elizabeth. All he saw were wherries and lighters and barges and tilt boats. At the far end of the wharf was an alehouse where fishermen sat on benches in the sun, repairing a net. He scanned the boats again. Where in God’s name was Daniels? They had to make it to the Elizabeth before the two o’clock tide.
His heart banged painfully in his chest. He had just killed a man. Roger was losing blood. The six of them were covered with stolen silver. And there was no skiff.
“One word of support from you, that’s all they want,” Honor urged Elizabeth. “It would mean everything to them.” She was trying to keep up with the Princess on the sand-packed garden path that ran from Somerset House to the river. Elizabeth walked briskly and her long legs covered the ground faster.
“I don’t want to hear about it. You have put me in peril by just telling me.”
Honor held back her anger. She had expected some excitement from the girl on hearing of Dudley’s venture, an eagerness for details. Some nervousness, too, of course, which they all felt. But not this wall of denial. She stuck by Elizabeth’s side as they passed through the orchard where cherry and apple buds were swelling in the heat.
“You cannot let these men fight for you without giving them some encouragement.”
“I did not ask them to fight.”
“But you will accept the throne if they win it for you,” Honor snapped. “Can you deny that?”
Elizabeth glared at her. “It is treason to say so.” She stomped up the steps to the raised flowerbeds that offered a view across the garden’s riverfront walls. The Thames swarmed with Easter boat traffic, Londoners coming and going to church.
Honor followed her. “Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about being queen.”
Elizabeth turned on her. “I have thought long and hard about imprisonment and execution. About the axe that cut off the head of my sweet cousin Jane when she tried to be queen. My sister ordered that death, and she hates me more than she ever hated Jane.”
“My lady, this venture is worlds away from that sad time. Lady Jane had no goodwill of the people, only her madly ambitious father. He propped her up on a stolen throne. You have the people’s respect as the daughter of King Henry. You have their love. You embody their hope for ending your sister’s tyranny. And many powerful men are loyal to you. The whole realm would welcome you as queen.”
She saw something spark in Elizabeth’s eyes. Eagerness after all? A desire to hear more? To make this cause her own? Elizabeth had just returned from chapel where she had dutifully attended mass, and she still held a rough stick cross, twisting it now between her fingers in nervous contemplation of Dudley’s enterprise.
There was a burst of ribald laughter. They both looked over the westward garden wall. Beyond the neighboring nobleman’s estate smoke drifted up from a cooking fire in the derelict tenements of the Savoy. Built decades ago as a poorhouse cheek by jowl with the great mansions of the Strand, the Savoy had degenerated into a squatting ground for petty criminals and vagrants. Elizabeth watched the smoke rise, absently twisting the stick cross in her hand. “It’s easy for you to talk so recklessly. You don’t know what it’s like to be in prison, to wonder every day if it will be your last.”
“I think I do. My husband has been in the Tower for four long months. Every day I wonder if it will be his last.”
Elizabeth looked more annoyed than sympathetic. “That’s the real reason you’re planning rebellion. I know you. All you think of is your family.”
Honor was taken aback at the heartless insult. Elizabeth had spent time with Richard at Hatfield when they had sat by Adam’s bedside.
“No. No, that’s wrong,” Elizabeth said quickly, contrite and flustered. “Good Master Thornleigh. He has my pity.”
Honor decided she could build on that. “I have learned that family is everything, my lady,” she said. “You need to think the same way. If you’re going to rule, the people of all England will be your family. That’s why, when brave men stand up for you, you must stand up for them.”
Elizabeth threw down her cross like a petulant child. “I don’t want them to! I didn’t ask them to. I don’t need them to. I have the protection of my brother-in-law. You said it yourself, he needs me next in the line of succession in case my sister dies. To keep my cousin Mary of Scotland from becoming queen of England. I’m safe—as long as I don’t make trouble.”
“A queen cannot run from trouble. A queen must meet trouble and transform it.”
“I am not queen!”
Honor bit her tongue. “Think, please think, of the fine men who are wagering all for you. Sir Henry Dudley, a bulldog for your rights. Lord John Bray, your good neighbor at Hatfield. Faithful old Sir John St. Loe, whose son has served you so well as the captain of your guard. My son, who saved your life. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, who—”
“Your son? What does he have to do with this?”
Honor was startled by the sudden keenness in the girl’s tone. She hesitated, unwilling to leak the information that Adam had just robbed the Queen’s treasury. “He is sailing for France at this very moment,” she said. “To help raise an army for you.”
Elizabeth looked horrified. “Why? Why him?”
What a question. “He believes in you,” Honor said tightly. She wished she could say she felt the same. She was beginning to wonder if this selfish young creature was fit to
rule.
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed in fury. “This is your doing. You made him.”
“I? How could I? He is his own man.”
“He could die! I shall never forgive you, woman. Leave me. Leave my side at once!”
Noon, and no sign of the skiff. They would miss the two o’clock tide.
Looking downriver from the palace wharf, Adam cast his mind to the Elizabeth moored off Billingsgate Wharf, waiting for them. Two tides daily. Five hours for the ebb to end and the next flood to begin, then seven more hours until high tide. So the next time he could weigh anchor was two o’clock in the morning. A neap tide, at least, and there would be some moonlight. Little comfort, he thought. What the devil was he to do for twelve hours, with Roger half fainting from his wound, and his crewmen anxious to be gone, and palace guards maybe already out looking for them? Should he hire a tilt boat to take them? But that would leave an oarsman who had seen their faces and seen them board the Elizabeth. He didn’t want to add another corpse to his sins today. He would wait. If Daniel hadn’t come by dusk, he would steal a boat and they would take their chances.
But they could not tarry on the wharf for hours, laden down so awkwardly and dangerously with silver. He had to get Roger out of sight. And the treasure.
“I could use a swallow of that,” Roger groaned with a feeble smile.
Adam followed his gaze to the servants hoisting the last hogsheads of beer out of the barge. They were hefting the barrels as though they were weightless. “Sorry, my friend, they’re empty,” Adam said. The palace had its own brew house. This was a shipment of fresh barrels. Then a thought struck him. Bless you, Roger.
He explained the plan to his men.
They crossed the wharf to the alehouse. Adam settled Roger inside, in the cool of a heavy-beamed alcove, and left Jack to watch over him. A few shillings bought Adam five empty hogsheads from the barkeep’s store. A few more shillings to the fishermen outside bought their nets. He and his crew rolled the hogsheads behind the building to a small courtyard filthy with fish refuse and littered with broken casks. A few minutes later they rolled the hogsheads, no longer empty, out to the wharf edge and onto the spread nets. The fishermen watched, idly interested, as Adam and the men used the nets to lower the heavy hogsheads into the water. They’d all seen it done by fishermen on countless wharfs during the dog days of every summer. A fine way to cool ale.
