Bare feet ran on the deck over their heads. Toby smiled. “I love you.” He put the package for Lopez on the cabin table, and froze.
A name was inked on the paper: “Lady Campion Lazender.”
“It’s yours.”
For a moment she stared at it, then, with cold fingers, she tore at the string and paper. Inside was a varnished wooden box. It was five inches deep, six inches square, with an elaborate metal latch.
She did not feel the ship lurch as the anchor sucked free of the mud. She did not sense the ship lean before the land-freeing wind.
She opened the lid, and she knew already what she would find.
The box was molded inside, lined with red velvet. Four holes had been made for the four seals, and three were empty.
In the fourth hole, its chain wound about the protruding embossed steel, was the golden seal of St. John.
She opened one of the stern windows and she screamed into the night. She screamed like a gull on that desolate coast. She screamed at the marsh, the saltings, at the dark line of the bleak land, “Father!”
Christopher Aretine did not hear her. He stood on the shore and watched the ship bearing his daughter away, taking her to safety, taking her with the love that he had so desperately wished for her. He watched till the dark shape of the boat was lost in the night.
She looked like her mother. To look at Campion was to remember the girl of so long ago, to bring back to Aretine the pain of hope and laughter, love and enjoyment, the memories. A hundred times he had wanted to tell Campion the truth, and a hundred times he had held back. Yet now she knew, and now she could find him if she so desired. She knew.
He turned, crunched over the shells and climbed the humped ridge of the turf. He envied her her love.
Aretine walked back into the barn, his eyes as empty as the sea. He picked up the wine bottle and drank, then looked at Sir Grenville. “Time for you now, Cony.”
Sir Grenville frowned. His belly hurt, but he still hoped. “Can’t we talk, Devorax?”
The big soldier laughed. “Devorax! You don’t remember me, do you? You only remember me when I was young, when you wanted me in your stinking sheets, when you had my portrait painted on to Narcissus.” Devorax laughed at the quaking flesh beneath him. “Do you still have the picture, Cony? Do you look at it and lust?”
Cony was shaking with fear.
Kit Aretine smiled. “I came back from Maryland when the war began, Cony. I prayed you would be my enemy.”
“No!” The word seemed to be torn from the lawyer as if by a flesh-hook.
“Yes.” Aretine turned to Ebenezer, and his voice was colder than the wind that carried Campion away. “My name is Christopher Aretine. Your sister pleaded for you. Should I let you live?”
Ebenezer could not answer. His bowels had turned to liquid. He could only remember this man hacking the corpse at Tyburn, slicing into the dead flesh with horrid skill.
Aretine turned away from them. His daughter had begged Ebenezer’s life, but he was in no mood to grant it. He looked at his men and his hand gestured about the whole building. “Kill them all.”
He walked out of the old stone building that had once been a church, and he heard the cries for mercy, the shrieking of Sir Grenville Cony. He heard the old, old sound of steel blades butchering men. He took no notice of their deaths. He walked to the ridge of turf and stared at the empty, empty sea and he thought of his daughter who had grown so straight and he felt a pity for himself. He drank.
Campion was crying, “He’s my father!”
Toby stared at the four seals, together on the table, and shook his head. “He didn’t want you to know till it was too late.”
There was an inked legend inside the lid of the polished box. “To Campion, with what I suppose is Love. Your father, Devorax, Aretine, Kit.” Campion shook her head. “I don’t understand!”
She picked up the final seal, the seal of St. John. It showed the poisoned chalice with which the Emperor Domitian had tried to kill the saint, and around the chalice’s stem was the snake that had carried the poison away.
There had been a crucifix inside St. Matthew for Matthew Slythe, a naked woman within St. Mark for Sir Grenville Cony, and a silver pig inside St. Luke for Mordecai Lopez. Her fingers unscrewed the final seal.
Inside, clasped in tiny silver claws, was her father’s fear.
A small, silvered looking-glass in which he could see himself.
The ship bent into the night, and its burden was love.
About the Authors
BERNARD CORNWELL is the author of the acclaimed Richard Sharpe Series, the Grail Quest series (featuring The Archer’s Tale, Vagabond, and Heretic), and many other novels. Mr.Cornwell lives with his wife on Cape Cod.
www.bernardcornwell.net
SUSANNAH KELLS is a pseudonym, now revealed to be Judy Cornwell
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Books by Bernard Cornwell
The Sharpe Novels (in chronological order)
• SHARPE’S TIGER* • SHARPE’S TRIUMPH*
SHARPE’S FORTRESS* • SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR*
SHARPE’S PREY* • SHARPE’S RIFLES • SHARPE’S HAVOC*
SHARPE’S EAGLE • SHARPE’S GOLD • SHARPE’S ESCAPE*
SHARPE’S BATTLE* • SHARPE’S COMPANY
SHARPE’S SWORD • SHARPE’S ENEMY
SHARPE’S HONOUR • SHARPE’S REGIMENT
SHARPE’S SIEGE • SHARPE’S REVENGE
SHARPE’S WATERLOO • SHARPE’S DEVIL*
The Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles
REBEL* • COPPERHEAD* • BATTLE FLAG*
THE BLOODY GROUND*
The Grail Quest Series
THE ARCHER’S TALE* • VAGABOND*
HERETIC*
Other Novels
GALLOWS THIEF*
STONEHENGE, 2000 B.C.: A NOVEL*
REDCOAT*
*Published by HarperCollinsPublishers
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A CROWNING MERCY. Copyright © 2006 by Bernard Cornwell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2006 ISBN: 9780061832987
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Bernard Cornwell, A Crowning Mercy
A Crowning Mercy Page 48
