by Barbara Kyle
“Commander bloody Valverde! He got his bone in but never paid for it.” She barged past him. “Let me at him!”
“Hold on.” He grabbed her arm, making her stagger.
“Whoa there, lover.” She groped for his shoulder as if she were so drunk she needed his support.
He relaxed with a smirk now that he understood. “Back out you go, doxy. You can’t come in here.”
She shrugged out of his grip with such force it tugged her left breast free above her bodice. The men’s eyes went to it and she made no move to cover herself. “I am in, and I’m not leaving till I get what Valverde owes me. Where is he?”
“Not here.”
“Ha!” She let her brandy breath hit his face and he winced at the vapor. “This is his house, right? And you’re his men, right? Maybe one or two of you know me, came round for some fun behind the barracks.” She pointed to a bearded fellow down the hall. “You there. Jurgen, isn’t it? I’d know that big salami of yours anywhere. Oo, look at it grow!”
A couple of them chuckled. The grizzled one didn’t. He held the door wide open. “On your way, now.”
Fenella tucked her bodice up to cover her breast, eyeing a staircase that led to the upper floor. “Valverde!” she bellowed. “Where is the rat?”
“I said you can’t—”
She stormed for the staircase and dashed up the steps. “Valverde, you pisser, come out! You know you owe me!”
The grizzled fellow shouted in irritation, “Stop that stupid doxy!” and two soldiers hurried up after her.
“Valverde!” She threw open a door. A bedchamber lay in gloom. Empty.
The soldiers reached the top of the stairs with the grizzled fellow right behind them. “Hey there, halt!”
She dashed on and threw open another door. A half-dozen soldiers looked up from a table where they sat playing cards, a single lantern burning, the window shutters closed tight. She shut the door just as the three who’d come upstairs reached her. Two grabbed her arms. She bellowed again, “Valver—”
A door opened. A woman frowned at the commotion. Rich clothing, a sharp-featured face, arrogant bearing. “What’s going on?” She glared at Fenella. “Who is this?”
“No one, Lady Thornleigh,” the grizzled man said. “Sorry, my lady.”
Fenella froze in the men’s grip. Adam’s wife! She pulled her frazzled wits together and blustered on. “Is Valverde in there with you?” Her eyes raked the room behind Frances Thornleigh. A bedchamber. Perched on the edge of the bed a girl and a boy, holding hands. Her heart told her this could only be Kate and Robert. Their pale, worried faces moved her. They were frightened—by their own mother. Fenella channeled all her loathing for the woman into a dark jest. “Make sure he pays you, dolly bird.”
Frances Thornleigh made a face of disgust. “Throw this trollop out.”
Fenella shouted curses as the soldiers dragged her down the stairs and pushed her out the front door. “To the street with her,” the grizzled fellow told the soldiers in the courtyard, and two of them manhandled her out through the gate. The last thing she saw as they turned back was a third soldier, a lanky man with a pockmarked face who ambled over, curious about the whore they were tossing out. Fenella ducked her head and hurried down the street.
That pockmarked face. Never would she forget it. The captain in Alba’s palace. At Alba’s command, he had slit the beggar girl’s throat.
A thin rain, warm as blood, spattered the Zenne River, which wound through the center of Brussels. Fenella hurried across the bridge to the island of Sint-Gorikseiland in the twilight, then down the jetty to Berck’s barge. She took a last look to make sure no one had followed her, then stepped aboard, opened the hatch, and slipped down the companionway to the cabin.
Adam and three of his men, weapons ready, stood watching her descend. Curry was closest to the steps.
“Don’t skewer me for a Spaniard, Master Curry,” she said wryly.
They relaxed. “Never fear, mistress. I may be jumpy, but I can tell a pretty woman from a poxy dago.”
She smiled, grateful that these men had come with her and Adam from Brielle. He had not asked them to, but they’d said they would not let him go alone, proof of the loyalty he inspired. Fenella knew how they felt, for she felt the same. He came to her and gently took her face in his hands. “I should never have let you go there. If anything had happened to you—”
“I’m fine,” she assured him. The love in his voice made all the danger worthwhile. “I saw them. Robert and Kate. In the house.”
“Alone?”
“No. You were right; your wife is there. And she has hired soldiers.”
“Soldiers? Not the duchess’s men?”
“No. From what I saw—” She stopped, not sure of the real meaning of what she’d seen. If it was what she thought, the danger was worse than Adam had expected.
“Sit down, rest,” he said, indicating the bench at the cabin table. “You’ve been through hell.”
She sat, grateful after her long walk. The scuffed table was grimy, sticky with ale, exactly as Berck Verhulst had left it the day he’d set out to join the Sea Beggars. It weighted her heart to think of her dead friend who’d given his life in the attack on Brielle. But she knew Berck would have welcomed her and Adam using his barge. An ideal place to hide.
Adam sat down across from her, waiting for her to go on. Curry took a stool beside the cold galley. The others, Morrison and Toth, sat on the narrow berth, and Morrison took up a mug of ale he’d apparently been interrupted in enjoying. Toth went back to whittling a stick with his dagger. Rain pattered on the deck above. All of them listened as Fenella continued.
“Your son and daughter are kept under guard. I counted fourteen men. They wore plain clothing, but I believe they’re soldiers of the palace guard.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Toth murmured in dismay, his whittling hand still. “Alba’s men?”
“What makes you say that?” Adam asked her.
“I recognized one of them, a captain from the palace.” She explained, getting through it quickly. The slaughter of that girl at Alba’s order made her sick. “I could be wrong, though, about him being from Alba. Your wife might have hired him privately, and the others, too. Mercenaries. But—”
“But if Alba did send them, he’s part of Frances’s scheme.”
“Do you think he masterminded it? Suggested it to her?”
“Or she went to him. To offer me.”
Fenella was appalled. That the woman’s hatred could go so deep!
“Either way, my lord,” Curry said grimly, “this makes black odds for us.”
He and Morrison and Toth waited in tense silence. Adam ignored their eyes on him and asked Fenella, “Where are they holding Robert and Kate?”
“I saw them in a bedchamber, at the rear of the second floor. They looked well enough, though frightened.” She explained about the soldiers she’d seen playing cards, and the ones in the courtyard, and gave the layout of the house, as much as she’d been able to see. “They kept it dim, I warrant to make you think there’s no one there but the children.” When she’d finished she said, “The Feast of Saint Hedda is tomorrow. They’ll be waiting for you.”
“And Alba’s no fool,” Adam said. “He’ll be expecting me to come with men of my own. Which means the fourteen you counted are just the guard. He’ll likely send more.” He looked at Curry and Toth and Morrison. “I want you to know what we’re up against.”
The three looked at one another, sober faced. “Pardon, my lord,” Morrison said, “but the four of us can’t fight a troop of battle-hardened Spanish tercios.”
Fenella saw the pain in Adam’s eyes. To have come so close to getting his son and daughter, to hear of them being held captive, but then to be forced to slink away, leaving them behind, this time forever—it was killing him. But Morrison was right. Alone, they had no chance against the might of Alba.
Adam told the men he’d give them his answer in the morning. The
y moved off to the forward berths, leaving him and Fenella alone. She said to him in sad wonder, “Your wife is the very devil. How can she hate you so much?”
“It’s more than that. I think it’s her way of keeping hope alive.”
“Hope?”
“That she might one day get home to England. If I’m dead, Robert inherits my title, my lands. She knows she can control the boy.”
Fenella shuddered. “But she must know she can never go back. She’s a traitor. She’d hang.”
“Not if the Queen was dead, too.”
What a dark, twisting labyrinth! It was beyond Fenella. She shook her head. “She’s mad.”
“Madness doesn’t stop people from trying to get what they want.” He plowed a hand through his hair. “I can’t leave without trying to get the children, Fenella. But you can. As for Curry and the others—”
“They’re still with you. So am I.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “And I’ve asked someone to visit us.”
24
The Cellar
The fire-tipped arrow blazed like a comet against the blue morning sky. Loosed from the neighbor’s roof, it sailed over the wall that surrounded the house of the departed Valverde family. Plunging, it pierced the stable’s thatched roof. Flames from the arrowhead scurried along the thatch.
On the street outside the house, Adam watched the fire arrow’s arc, then watched it disappear behind the wall. Standing among the leafy bay trees with Curry and Morrison and Toth, he waited, jumpy with frustration, for all he could see was a patch of the courtyard through the open gate. Open for me to walk into Alba’s trap. The leaves above him rustled in the breeze like voices whispering a warning. He scanned the top of the wall where the arrow had disappeared. What was happening? Curse it, has the thing hit the ground and died?
“There!” Curry said quietly, pointing.
Adam saw it now. A thread of black smoke. Morrison, tense as a bearbaiting dog, started to unsheathe his knife and lunged a step toward the open gate, but Adam caught him and held him back. “Not yet.”
The four of them watched the smoke thicken and billow, the column listing leeward in the wind. Adam could smell the smoke now, and he heard the first shout from the house behind the wall, the words unclear but the meaning unmistakable: an alarm. Not panicky; a disciplined military call to action.
“That’s cut into their breakfast,” Toth muttered with a dark grin. They heard a bang like a door kicked open, and soldiers’ voices rose, several now. Adam caught the clipped words of a call for water buckets. Toth, tense but eager, said to him, “Now?”
“Not yet.” Adam turned toward the street and shouted, “Fire!”
Curry turned and took up the call. “Fire!”
Down the street a bald head craned from an upstairs window. A few houses away a door opened and a woman stepped out, wiping her hands on her apron. “Fire!” Adam yelled. “Help!” Up and down the street window shutters were thrown open and people appeared at doorways. Two men came running, and three more jogged from the opposite direction, two of them with buckets. “Commander Valverde’s house?” one called as he ran.
“Yes!” Adam said. “Please, help us!”
The small throng of neighbors reached them, with more heading toward them every moment: men in homespun work clothes, a blacksmith in his thick leather apron, three young apprentices, a baker dusted with flour, a couple of sturdy housewives. Several immediately hurried through the open gate. Adam turned to his men. “Now.”
They ran in with the anxious neighbors. The courtyard rang with the voices of over a dozen soldiers trying to contain the fire that now blazed all along the stable roof. Some must have been sleeping in the stable, for they were dragging out their belongings, stamping at teeth of flames on sacks and satchels. A half-dozen more soldiers poured out of the house to join those at the well in an elbow of the wall, passing buckets down a line of men and up to two on a ladder against the stable wall who tossed the water onto the blazing roof. Adam and his men blended with the excited people from the street who kept streaming into the courtyard, twenty or more neighbors now. The soldiers’ disciplined actions gave way to disorder as the neighbors, milling pell-mell, pitched in to fight the flames. Adam counted over two dozen soldiers, a frightening number, because he knew there would be others in the house obeying their orders to guard his children. He’d been right: Alba had sent a troop. Adam caught the alarm in the eyes of Curry and Morrison and Toth, who were surely thinking the same thing. How many soldiers altogether? Thirty? More? Don’t think about that. Just get into the house. Get Robert and Kate.
The front door of the house was open, two more soldiers hurrying out to join their fellows. Adam skirted the bucket line, scanning the neighbors until he spotted the blacksmith, a big fellow with a bristling sandy moustache. Their eyes met. Adam nodded to him. The blacksmith gave a terse nod back. Adam turned and beckoned Curry and Morrison and Toth, who followed him as he strode toward the open front door, passing laboring soldiers and neighbors. His heart beat furiously as he glanced behind him at the blacksmith who suddenly bellowed, “In the name of Prince William!”
Instantly the blacksmith and most of the male neighbors drew weapons—daggers, dirks, axes, knives. There were twenty at least and they fell on the unsuspecting soldiers with battle cries. Adam drew his sword and his three men drew theirs and they ran for the door, Adam inwardly blessing Fenella for inviting the visitor last night to the barge, the blacksmith DeWitt, leader of the Brussels Brethren. These “neighbors” were his fellows. One had loosed the fire arrow.
Adam reached the door with his three men as weapons clanged behind them and men shouted and the stable blazed. With a last glance over his shoulder he saw a star of fire, windborne, sailing from the burning stable toward the roof of the house.
He burst into the house. Soldiers came at him, seven of them, but having been taken by surprise they were ill organized and he and his men hacked and slashed in a ferocious attack. Curry and Toth felled three. Morrison battled another. Adam parried with an expert swordsman whose blade sliced his forearm, drawing blood. Adam rammed his sword into the attacker’s belly. The man crumpled and fell. So did Morrison’s opponent.
As Toth and Morrison fought on against the last two, Adam bolted for the stairs with Curry right behind him. He raced up the steps and down the hall toward the door of the bedchamber where Fenella had seen the children. He was almost there when the door flew open. He glimpsed Kate, her face white with alarm. She was still in nightdress and robe. She saw him and her face lit up with joy just as two guards lunged out at him, swords drawn. Adam slashed and parried with manic vigor now that he’d seen Kate. Curry was beside him and together they cut down the two guards.
“Father!” Kate cried.
Adam went to her, catching his breath. “Where’s your brother?”
“Here,” Robert said faintly.
Adam whipped around. Across the room Frances had hold of the boy. How pale and pinched Frances looked! Three years since he’d seen her this close, and she met his gaze like an enemy, her eyes flashing with hate. Or was it fear? Adam didn’t know and didn’t care. She was gripping Robert’s shoulders, his back to her, holding him against her. Adam’s eyes didn’t leave her as he said to Curry, “Take my daughter. Kate, go with this man.”
She ran to Curry. Adam stalked across the room to Frances. “Let the boy go.”
Frances looked wildly toward the door for help. But there was only Curry standing with Kate beside the bodies of the fallen guards, one dead in a pool of blood, the other moaning as he died. Shouts and the clang of weapons in the courtyard rang downstairs. Robert stared up at his father’s blood-smeared sword. His head jerked, again and again. The tic.
“Robert,” Adam said gently, holding out his hand. “Come with me.”
Trust shone in the boy’s eyes. He broke from his mother’s grasp and took a step toward Adam and Adam caught his arm. But Frances snatched the boy’s collar, making him lur
ch to a stop. Robert, quaking, stood between his parents, who each had hold of him with one hand.
Adam raised his sword above Frances’s fingers curled on the collar at their son’s neck. The blade hovered over her wrist.
“Release him, madam, or lose your hand.”
She held his gaze. “You would not,” she challenged. “And now they’ll put you in chains! Alba will have your head!”
He hesitated, though hating himself for yielding. He was about to wrench the boy to him to break Frances’s grip, when a drop of blood slid from the blade and hit her wrist. She flinched in revulsion. It was enough, and Adam jerked the boy to him. Robert threw his arms around his father’s waist and clung to him. Adam quickly led him to Curry and Kate at the door. “Come!” Down the stairs they ran, Adam first, sword ready, the children hurrying after him, Curry at the rear.
“Stop them!” Frances screamed down from the top of the stairs. “Captain Ramos, stop them!”
Soldiers from the courtyard were running in, led by a lean, pock-faced officer. Ramos, Adam thought. The captain Fenella described. The child killer. Eight or ten soldiers were with him, but Morrison and Toth were ready for them, and on the soldiers’ heels some Brethren were attacking from the rear. Ramos’s men turned to fight the Brethren. DeWitt bolted in, holding a jagged timber as long and thick as his arm, the end of it ablaze. After Adam and the children reached the bottom of the stairs and ran on, DeWitt hurled the burning stick onto the steps. Flames licked the newel posts.
“To the cellar!” DeWitt shouted to Adam, beckoning.
Adam led his charges past soldiers and Brethren battling all along the hall. The soldiers were strong now that they had rallied, but the Brethren were fierce in their zeal. Adam glimpsed Toth battling Ramos. Toth ducked and Ramos’s sword slashed air. Toth lunged at him with his long knife, but Ramos parried savagely with his sword, disarming Toth, his knife clattering to the floor. Ramos’s sword slashed Toth’s throat. Blood spurted. Toth fell.
Rage exploded in Adam and he lunged with his sword for Ramos as Ramos turned to face one of the Brethren. But Curry grabbed his elbow, spinning him around. “Too late, my lord, Toth’s dead. Come!”
