“You are quite a poet, Master Littleton.”
“She has made me so. I think perhaps that that was the downfall of Henry Darnley; that she enchanted him too and yet would not quite give herself to him. I don’t believe she ever gives herself completely. Enchantresses never do. Perhaps that was why Bothwell felt he must use force, to take what she would not ever willingly yield.”
“We are talking, Master Littleton, of a dissolute, drunken, and diseased man whose wife wished to be free of him, but instead of using legal means, left the matter to a pack of practiced murderers. And then married the chief of them afterwards.”
This time Tobias was the silent one, until he said: “We shall never agree. I am sorry. I am not a monster, Mistress Stannard, but I do not think as you do. As I see it, I have tried to serve those I care for most, as best I can. I cannot regret it,” said Tobias. “In time, even Penelope herself may come to thank us. The Thwaite match is as good as any, to my mind.”
• • •
It seemed an interminable journey, though when I worked it out later, we only went about three miles. I wondered if there were any chance that Sir Francis and his men were still riding about in the fog and prayed that they would suddenly loom up in front of us but they didn’t. What loomed up instead, apparently solidifying from the vapors, was a wall of rock with a cave mouth in it. We halted before it and, peering at it, I saw that it was regular in shape, rounded at the top, and almost certainly man-made, a tunnel rather than a natural cavern. Tobias whistled softly.
There was an answering whistle and a figure appeared at the entrance, carrying a flambeau. Its light danced over his face and I recognized Magnus Whitely. “Tobias?” he said. “Is that you?”
Tobias jumped out of his saddle, threw his reins to the younger Grimsdale, and went forward. He seized Whitely’s arm and steered him a few yards away. I heard Tobias talking rapidly and then Whitely’s voice raised in question and exclamation. It went on for some time and at one point sounded like an argument. But the indignant tone subsided presently and they came back to us. Whitely approached me and stood looking up at me. I have rarely seen such hatred in anyone’s face.
“You! I’m thrown out of my employment because of you and now Queen Mary has failed to take the chance we offered her and I wonder how much you had to do with that. Bad luck, that’s what you are! For Tyesdale, for me, for the Queen of Scotland, and for your own damned ward as well. Get down!”
“Do as he says,” said Tobias. “He wants you to have the privilege of preparing Mistress Pen for her wedding. It’s to be hurried on.”
“The idea,” said Whitely, “was that the Grimsdales should take Mistress Pen to Fernthorpe and that they would have the marriage performed some time today but we wouldn’t be there. I was to hand Mistress Pen over to the Grimsdales and go at once to Lapwings, where Tobias was waiting with the queen. We would hide there all day and then, if it seemed safe, to travel on the next night. But now, there is no Queen Mary to look after, only you.”
“And ourselves,” said Tobias urgently. “We stopped Mistress Stannard from sending word to Knollys, but he was bound to come to Tyesdale with the queen. There always was a weak point there. It’s my belief that he knows.”
“Maybe, but he hasn’t followed her, you say.” Whitely jerked a discourteous thumb toward me as I slowly obeyed orders and clambered down from Tobias’s pillion. Once down, I found myself face-to-face with Whitely, which was frightening. His rage was so very palpable. Combined with the crimson torchlight it made his features, usually so nondescript, look almost demonic.
“Knollys hasn’t lost the queen, has he?” Whitely said. “She’s still his captive. The only person missing from Tyesdale is Mistress Stannard here and maybe no one’s noticed yet that she’s gone. Maybe she really didn’t dare to give us away. We’d still be wise to make for France, but I think we can spare just an hour or two. I want to see the knot tied between Andrew Thwaite and Mistress Pen, and I want Mistress Stannard to see it too; and I want to watch her seeing it.”
“It’s wasting time!”
“Not much. It’s not dawn yet. Come with me, mistress!”
Whitely seized my arm and hurried me into the tunnel. “What is this place?” I demanded, stumbling on the uneven floor.
“It’s an abandoned mine,” said Whitely. There were some unlit torches lying in a pile. He picked one up, lit it from the one he was holding, and shoved it into an iron bracket on the wall just inside the entrance. “On Fernthorpe land. They’d lost their original mines, but a year or two back they thought they’d found a new one. Only the seam ran out. They often do, round here. Now. Before we go any farther . . .”
His grip on my arm was painful. He twisted me around so that he could stare into my face and spoke in a low voice and without any affected emphases. “Not one word about Mary Stuart, do you hear? Penelope knows nothing of the plot and must not be told. If she is told then there will be no marriage because we would have to kill her. Understand?”
My guts went cold. I understood all too well, and more than he realized. “Yes. I do. Is Pen here?” I tried not to let my voice shake. “What’s been happening to her?”
“Nothing that shouldn’t. An older woman has been with her constantly. She’s had food, clean water, wine, and a warm bed.” Whitely’s voice was mocking. “No one has molested her. She is Andrew Thwaite’s promised bride and we undertook to deliver her intact to her bridegroom. I have guarded her virtue as though she were my own daughter. Now. You understand? Not one word about Mary Stuart.”
“Very well.”
“Good. Come this way.”
He marched me on along the tunnel and then turned sharply into a side chamber. “Mistress Penelope! Wake up!”
In the darkness beyond the torchlight, I heard someone stir and there was a faint clanking sound. A woman’s voice said: “What’s to do?” and then Pen’s voice came, slurred with sleep but shaky with fear as well. “What is it? What’s happening?” Whitely walked forward, torch held high, and then I saw.
The side chamber was small, perhaps eight feet by ten. The walls and floor were of rock and there was no door. There was a wide pallet on the floor and on it, two women were sitting up. The older one looked vaguely familiar but in the uncertain light I couldn’t make out her features clearly enough to recognize her properly. The other, however, was Pen.
The pallet was adequately covered, with fur rugs of some kind. There was a table, with a basin and facecloth on it, and a stool, on which some outer clothes were piled. There was a bucket with a lid and even a couple of books lying beside the basin. The place was dirty, though. A dark dust filmed everything, and as Pen reached to pull her rugs up around her, I saw that the shift in which she had been trying to sleep was grubby.
As she moved, the clanking sound came again. Then I realized what it was and if hearts can truly bleed, mine did at that moment. Her left wrist was encircled by a bracelet made of iron, to which a chain was fastened. It was long and lay piled in loops between her pallet and the wall, but the other end of it was padlocked to a staple in the wall. It would let her move freely enough about the little chamber but she had no chance of escaping from it.
I darted forward. “Pen!”
“Mistress Stannard!” With a gasp of joy, she threw herself off the pallet and into my arms. I held her while her tears soaked my shoulder.
“As you see, she’s well enough.” Tobias had followed us in. “Her duenna, by the way, is Madge Grimsdale. You’ve met, I believe.”
I knew her then. Here was our hostess at Grimsdale’s farm, on our last night before we reached Tyesdale.
“I’ve takken good care o’ t’lass,” she said anxiously.
“I’m sure you have,” I said. She had had to do what Grimsdale told her, I supposed, and at least Pen had had her company. Mistress Grimsdale might be under her husband’s thumb and could never be an ally, but I thought she was essentially kind.
Pen, snuffling, drew back to l
ook up into my face. “Mistress Stannard! The trouble I’ve caused! I am so sorry. So very very sorry. If you can’t forgive me, I’ll understand, but I thought . . . I believed . . .” Her eyes shifted to Tobias, standing in the doorway. Through her tears, she glared at him. “I can’t believe I ever thought I loved you!” she threw at him. “You betrayed me! You’re evil!”
“You may not always think so,” Tobias informed her coolly.
“Have you come to take me home?” Her eyes returned to mine, and then glanced around as though expecting friendly support to appear from somewhere. If only it could! I thought. But instead, I must draw her to me again and hold her fast, to give her what comfort I could, as I said: “No, Pen darling. I am a prisoner, just as you are. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. But I have seriously offended Master Whitely here and . . .”
“You are to be immediately married to Andrew Thwaite,” said Whitely. “In my presence and that of your guardian, Mistress Stannard. Tobias! Here’s the key to that pretty bracelet.”
“In my opinion,” said Tobias, taking the key that Whitely held out to him and undoing the fetter around Pen’s wrist, “we should send the young lady to her future husband and leave at once, but since you’re so determined . . . there we are.”
The iron was off. Pen rubbed her wrist. I said: “Where in God’s name did you get those fetters from?”
“The basement of Bolton before I left,” said Tobias. “There were all sorts of unregarded oddments lying about down there. These came in very useful. Pen, we have a priest with us who will acccompany us to Fernthorpe. Magnus and I will now leave you ladies for a short time. Mistress Stannard, get your ward dressed and convince her that she should resign herself to her future as Mistress Thwaite. Madge, take note of everything that Mistress Stannard says to Mistress Penelope, and report her words to me. You have fifteen minutes. Then we ride for Fernthorpe.”
24
Grimy and Reluctant Bride
Pen was not prepared to resign herself to her marriage, and not only because the Thwaites were guilty of kidnapping and murder. I knew that she was repelled by Andrew Thwaite, yet even I had underestimated the strength of her feelings. The violence of her resistance astounded me.
Even if the Thwaite family had been law-abiding, with a testimonial from an archangel and a home as comfortable as Richmond Palace, it would have made no difference. She didn’t merely distrust the look of Andrew Thwaite, it seemed; she had glanced at him once and been seized by the kind of physical loathing that many people feel for snakes or spiders.
Pen’s protest was worse even than Mary Stuart’s outburst when she learned that her escape plans were canceled. Pen cried and screamed, threw herself onto the pallet, and pounded it with her fists; then, when I begged her to be calm, promising her that somehow or other, eventually, I would get the marriage annulled, she flew at me and her fists pummeled me instead.
“What’s the good of that? I’ll have been pushed into bed with him first and it’ll be legal, legal! He’ll have rights over me; he’ll own me! I can’t do this, I won’t! He’s horrible! He’s . . . he’s . . . like a reptile! I won’t . . . I can’t . . .!”
It was the kind of situation, I thought, still fighting against my own weariness, in which lockpicks and a dagger are no use whatsoever. Indeed, at one point, when I was trying to hold her, to steady her, she felt the outline of the dagger sheath and tried to get at it in order, she said, to stab herself.
Madge Grimsdale, appalled, intervened at that point to help me quieten my frantic ward, who at that stage actually had my dagger halfway out of its sheath. Between us, we broke her grip and made her sit down on the pallet. Hardening my heart, I took her by the shoulders and shook her until I had startled the hysteria out of her.
“This must stop!” I told her. “I cannot save you from this ceremony, Pen. It’s no use attacking me. Be quiet! Listen! Willing or not, you will have no option. You . . .”
“Brides are supposed to say I will. Well, I shan’t say it!”
“You will be pronounced man and wife with Andrew Thwaite no matter what you say. It’s been done before. Rules can be bent and I have no doubt that the Thwaites and Magnus Whitely are prepared to bend them into figures of eight. You have one simple choice and that is to keep your dignity or lose it. Stop all this noise. Let us help you dress and . . .”
“I can’t do it!”
“You’d be wiser if you did. Go through with it. Say I won’t instead of I will if you like. I’m a witness; the day may come when I shall speak for you before a tribunal to get the marriage annulled and that will be useful evidence. As for what happens afterwards; shut your eyes and imagine you’re a log of wood.”
“With him? With that . . .!”
“I said: shut your eyes. And, thereafter, keep your wits about you. I don’t know . . . I may not be at Tyesdale for a while. I’m a prisoner, as I said . . .” I must not endanger Pen by speaking even obliquely of Mary Stuart. If I did, Mrs. Grimsdale would report it. But I was grimly sure of one thing; my captors would not let me go tamely back to tell all I knew to Sir Francis Knollys. What they intended to do with me instead was something I was trying not to think about. I doubted very much if I ever would testify on Pen’s behalf at an annulment tribunal. Aloud, I said: “Your brother George may come to see you and . . .”
Pen interrupted me, with scorn. “George! He’d just say, ‘Are they Catholic?’ And when he knows they are . . .”
“Your mother will have something to say in the matter. She’ll want to know who you’ve married and how you are. Once she knows how you feel, you can trust her to act.” I thought hearteningly of Ann Mason, whose apparently gentle nature had much in common with the soft paws of a cat, which conceal a lethal set of claws. If I were not there, Ann would rescue her daughter. I knew it, which was more than Tobias Littleton or Magnus Whitely did.
“Whatever happens, it won’t last forever,” I said. “Smile and be pleasant and maybe it won’t be so bad.” Because of Madge Grimsdale’s presence I did not say openly: smile to allay their suspicions and bolt for Tyesdale the first chance you get but I stared hard into Pen’s face and I saw comprehension in her eyes. “Now then. Get dressed! Tobias will be back in a moment. Do you want to be carried screaming to the horses or will you walk on your own feet with your head high?”
In the end she let us dress her. There were a couple of iron torch brackets with torches in them in the chamber, and before leaving us, Tobias had used his own to kindle them. We could see well enough. Her gown was as grubby as everything else; as a bride, she cut a very strange figure. I thought sadly of her best blue dress, which I had brought to Yorkshire in the hope that she would wear it on a happy wedding day. However, despite the pervading grime and the whiteness of her face beneath it, she did at least walk out of the little rock room on her own feet. I took one of the torches and lit the way for her.
It was a good torch, burning more clearly and brightly than the one from which Tobias had lit it. As we left the chamber, its light showed me more of the passage than I had seen before. In one direction was the way out, with a light burning at the entrance and the night still dark beyond it. In the other, the passage ran on to end abruptly in a wall of hacked and tool-marked rock with a pile of small rubble at its feet. I glanced at it, began to turn away, and then turned back, halting for a moment.
The pile of rubble lay across the width of the passage, and there was something odd, something suggestive about its shape. I said: “Wait!” and walked away from Pen for a closer look. It only took me a moment to see that this was no accidental heap of fallen rock, but had been piled by human hands. I stirred the edge of it with a foot, and then, stooping, clawed some of it aside. It was loose and small enough to move fairly easily.
I straightened up quickly, feeling sick, and went back to Pen, who was standing rigidly in the chamber entrance. “What is it?” she asked. Her voice was high with strain.
“I wondered if there was another way out. I shou
ld have known better,” I said. “Come. Keep up your courage.”
Whitely and Tobias were waiting for us at the entrance. Whitely took her away from me and put her up behind Father Robinson, whose pillion, evidently, had been intended for her.
Wordlessly, she allowed it. But there was no more resignation in her than there ever had been. I knew it, and watched her with misgiving.
While Whitely was settling Pen in her saddle, Tobias caught hold of Madge Grimsdale and I realized that he was asking her what I had said while Penelope was being dressed. He looked relieved by her answers.
The third pillion turned out to be for Madge. Her husband and son, however, seemed to have disappeared. Disagreeable as it was to speak to Tobias, I asked him where they had gone.
“On ahead,” he said shortly. “To make sure that the Thwaites are up and ready for us when we get there.”
It was a brief ride; the abandoned mine was only half a mile or so from Fernthorpe’s farmhouse. When Ryder and Dodd went there in search of Pen, they had been quite near to her, but no one had thought of looking for the eloping pair in a disused mine. We had all thought in terms of a house somewhere, with friends or Tobias’s parents or in a city like York. Nor had the search for Harry’s body ever brought anyone close to the mine. Perhaps it would have done in the end. We would never know. Well, I thought, if I survived long enough to report that mound of rubble to anyone, we knew where to look for him now. Under the stones I had scraped aside I had seen a human hand.
The mists were clearing when we reached the farmhouse and dawn was not far off. In the east, the stars were fading. The rooms were lit, however, and Will Thwaite, wrapped in a brocade dressing gown, came out to greet us with a flambeau held high, a broad and gap-toothed grin, and a stream of words. He spluttered vigorously every time he used one with an s in it.
The Fugitive Queen Page 25
