He heard the clanging again and realized it was coming from the door to his cell. A torch flashed in the darkness and the iron door was pulled open. Sir Charles Douglas stood there on the threshold. Alan recognized him immediately by the vibrant red of his beard and hair.
“Alan Trevor?” Douglas’ voice gruffly challenged. He held the torch high. “I can scarcely see you, lad. It’s taken me all night to track you down. Those blasted idiots who took you thought you were a French spy.”
“No, sir, I’m not.”
“No, just an English heretic and traitor,” Douglas said. Strangely enough, there was no condemnation in his tone, only a heavy sadness. “Come with me. I want to talk to you, but I’ve no mind to do it in this hole.”
Alan rose unsteadily to his feet and followed Douglas out into a dark corridor, up a flight of stairs, and into a sparsely furnished room. He was weak from fear and lack of nourishment. He had eaten nothing for three days. “Alexandra, sir? Is she safe?”
Sir Charles spat a vicious curse. “Your brother’s got her on his ship.”
“So they escaped?”
“If you can call it escape when a man has rape and murder foremost in his mind. He and his paltry band of heretics were ambushed at the riverside. Quite a few of them were killed. De Montreau, that snake, had Alexandra there, and Roger dragged her off at knife-point, as mad with grief and rage as I’ve ever seen a man. That wretched Frenchman had him convinced that she had most vilely betrayed him.”
“Sweet Jesu. But it was I who—”
“Never mind; I’ve heard the tale,” Douglas interrupted. “It all gets blacker and blacker, like a bloody Greek tragedy.” He sighed heavily. “Catherine’s son. For her sake, I’ve left the blackguard alone, even though ‘twas no secret to me he was up to some devilry. But I should have clapped him in prison long ago.”
Alan swallowed hard as the implications sank in. Alexandra abducted by Roger and a prisoner on his ship. Roger believing her guilty of betraying him when it had been he, Alan, who had given their plans away. Hadn’t she enlightened him, explained the true situation? He groaned. Knowing Alix, he realized she probably had not. “Surely he will not harm her.”
Sir Charles Douglas just looked at him.
“He will not kill her,” Alan said, more to reassure himself than Douglas. “Not even he would go so far.”
“He’s gone far enough. Her abduction is common knowledge. De Montreau has made sure of that. One of the queen’s ladies taken by a daring criminal. The tale is all over London already.”
“Mayhap it will blow over and he will wed her.”
“Not likely. I know his type. He ruins women, he doesn’t marry them. Don’t you know the reason for de Montreau’s hatred? Roger seduced his virgin sister, got his bastard upon her, then beat her till she miscarried and died.”
“That can’t be true.” But even as he spoke, Alan remembered Geoffrey’s accusation in the torture chamber. It had been the first he had ever heard of the unfortunate Celestine. “Roger wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Ha! If you’d seen him the other night on the riverbank, pressing his blade against my daughter’s throat until her blood welled up, you’d sing a different tune, lad.” His voice broke in anguish as he added, “In truth, I don’t know whether she’s alive or dead.”
Sick at heart, Alan stared at the red-haired man. Usually Douglas was a robust, vibrant man, possessed of the same energy for life that his daughter had, but tonight he looked old and drained of vitality. “What can we do?”
Douglas’ expression hardened. “We’ll not sit by and do nothing, that is certain.” His eyes gleamed ruthlessly. “He’s pushed my face in it, and now I’m going to return the favor. I don’t like to do it, but by God, he’s gone too far this time.” His blue gaze shifted and burned into Alan. “That’s why I need you, lad. You know where they were headed with their cargo of heretics, do you not? I’ll be sending you after them. You’re the only person who can save her. If it’s not already too late.”
But it was too late, Alan knew now, as his boat approached the Argo and banged up against the sleek ship’s side. Not to save her life; that, thank God, wasn’t necessary.
But his brother and his dearest friend had come together at last, just as he had been dreading they would. For Alan’s own heart and soul and peace of mind, it was too late indeed.
*
Alexandra was up on the quarterdeck enjoying the sun and the sea breeze and supervising the first outing on the part of her patient, Francis Lacklin. After several weeks of bed rest, his chest wound had made good progress toward healing. His muscles were very stiff, though, and his right arm and shoulder, in particular, had lost some mobility. The fresh air, she’d decided, would do him good.
“Are you tired?” she asked as they took a turn around the small high deck. She put one arm around his waist. “Lean some of your weight on me.”
Lacklin gave her an indulgent smile. “It’s not necessary that you support me, Alexandra. I’m thirty-six years old, not seventy.”
“If you wish to reach seventy, you’ll do as I say.”
“How Roger puts up with your nagging, I can’t imagine.”
Alexandra laughed. “I only nag people who are too weak to defend themselves. I’m not a fool, you know.”
“I know that very well,” he said more seriously.
Alexandra ignored the flicker of unease his words created in her. Amazingly, she and Francis had begun to lay down the foundation for a friendship of sorts. Since she expected to spend the next several months in close quarters with him, she was determined not to do—or think—anything to jeopardize this fragile sense of trust.
During his slow convalescence Alexandra had spent several hours a day sitting beside his bed, trying to repress the suspicions that had been aroused by his strange remark about Pris Martin. She begrudged him neither her service nor her time. There were only so many hours a day she could spend lolling about in bed with Roger; and when they had reached the busy port of Antwerp, her lover had become preoccupied with other matters. The heretics had had to be smuggled ashore. Once they were safely sent on their way to the German states, where Calvinism was well established, Roger had turned his attention to his commercial ventures. He had a good deal of business ashore. “Because of the thriving cloth trade, Antwerp has become the Venice of the north,” Roger explained to her. “England may be a commercial power to reckon with one day, but at present we’re no rivals for the Dutch.”
Because the Netherlands were controlled by Spain and thus allied to Mary of England, Roger categorically refused to take Alexandra ashore. “‘Tis too much of a risk,” he told her. So she had no choice but to spend her spare hours with Francis Lacklin, who was also languishing with boredom.
He no longer preached to her as he had done last summer at Whitcombe. He prayed sometimes and read the Holy Scriptures, but he was easily distracted; often he would frown over a passage, then toss it aside, his face pale, his eyes troubled. Sometimes Alexandra would look up from her own book—Roger’s cabin was a veritable library of wonderful volumes—to find Francis staring speculatively at her, and she would feel a little chill as she wondered if he knew what she suspected.
At other moments, when Francis made an unexpected jest, or when she saw him arguing philosophy or playing chess with Roger, Alexandra found herself wondering if the incriminating words he had uttered had not merely been the wanderings of a fevered brain. Fantasies, no more. She knew of no reason why Francis should have murdered Will. It made no sense at all.
She had not spoken of her latest suspicions to Roger. Like the boy who cried wolf, Alexandra knew she would not be believed if she made another accusation in this matter, at least not unless she had amassed a mountain of proof.
Besides, on that night at on the Thames riverbank, Francis Lacklin had freely made the greatest sacrifice of all by offering up his own life to save Roger’s. On top of that, how could she accuse him? It would bring nothing but pa
in to all of them if she did.
She and Francis were making one more turn around the quarterdeck when a young sailor shouted up to her that there was a young man asking to speak with her. After she helped Francis sit down, she leaned over the wooden balustrade, searching the main deck for someone whom she assumed to be a messenger from Roger, who had gone ashore early that morning. She saw a tall, slender man dressed in the English style. He looked in her direction, shading his eyes in a gesture she recognized. And then she was running, practically sliding down the steep ladder that led to the main deck. “Alan!” She flung herself into her old friend’s arms. “I’ve been so worried about you. Thank God you’re alive!”
Despite his heavy heart, Alan was cheered by the joyful intensity of her greeting. He hugged her hard. “I was afraid you might not be. Flung as you were into the lion’s den.”
“In sooth, I’ve tamed the lion,” she said lightly. “Now, what news, what news? You look gaunt and tired. Come inside; I’ll have wine sent up. Are you hungry? Oh, Alan, it gladdens my heart to see you!”
A few minutes later they were sitting in what was obviously the master’s cabin and just as obviously Alexandra’s primary abode. There were two gowns—both looked new—hanging on a hook upon one wall, a silver comb and brush on a small shelf beside the neatly made bunk, and a book of Greek poetry open on the massive desk that, together with the bunk, took up most of the space in the small room. Roger’s things were there also: his maps and charts, the sea chests where he kept his clothes, a pair of leather boots, a clean linen shirt flung over the end of the bed.
There was a somewhat scruffy-looking cat curled up in the center of the bunk, regarding him through half-open eyes. It apparently found him uninteresting, and returned to its nap. Alan tried not to think about what his brother and Alix must be doing together in that bed. She seemed unembarrassed by her fall from virtue. She was clad in a simple summer gown made of some silky blue material; her hair was braided and coiled atop her head to keep her neck cool in the sultry heat. Her face was well-scrubbed and free of the fine cosmetics he had grown accustomed to seeing her wear lately; if anything, she looked younger than she had appeared at the court of Mary of England, less worldly, more innocent.
“Alix, I have to ask: are you all right?”
She smiled and nodded. “Don’t I look it?”
She did, he admitted grudgingly. She looked relaxed and free of the cares that had weighed her down at court. “Your father sent me after you. But I would have come anyway, to see, that is, to make certain…” His voice trailed off.
“I’m fine. Tell me all the news.”
Alan supplied her with the details of all that had happened since she and Roger left the country. He explained that Roger had been formally accused of treason and heresy. “There’s a price on his head. He can’t go back to England, ever.”
“But you weren’t arrested and charged? We’ve been so worried that they might try to lay the blame on you.”
“I pretended ignorance of all but the barest details, and your father knew, of course, that I’d been up at Oxford until recently. I don’t think he seriously considered me as one of the conspirators. He was far more interested in finding out if I knew where Roger had taken you. He’s very worried about you, Alix.”
“Is there a price on my head too?”
“No. Your father made certain of that. He tried to put it about that you were ill, that you had retired to Westmor, but the tale quickly got about, as such tales will, that Roger had abducted you. That much Sir Charles finally admitted. You are seen as the victim, the innocent martyr to a ruthless man’s machinations. No real blame has been attached to you. But of course there’s a scandal all the same.”
“The queen? What does she say about all this?”
There was no reason not to be honest. Alexandra would have guessed the truth anyway, knowing her mistress as she did. “In public she mourns your loss and reviles your kidnapper. In private, according to your father, she questions what you did to ‘attract the blackguard’s lust.’”
Alexandra frowned, then made a rueful face. “So much for my reputation. Never mind,” she added, reaching out to pat Alan’s hand. “After all, ‘tis true. I did do everything I could to attract him. He may have seized me by force, but I’ve remained with him willingly.”
Alan didn’t want to hear it. The topic made him very uncomfortable. “Where is he?”
“Ashore, haggling one final time with his agent, I believe. Something about a shipment of Flemish lace that hasn’t yet been deposited in the Argo’s holds. He has an order direct from Suleyman’s wife Hurrem Sultan for Flemish lace, and he insists that he will not sail without it.”
“When will he return?”
Alexandra regarded him steadily with her clear green eyes, and then slowly said, “Alan, he knows what happened in Geoffrey’s cellar. Please have no fears about that.”
Alan could feel the color rise in his neck and cheeks. “You told him I was the one who betrayed his plans?”
“Not until he guessed the truth. I also told him how bravely you defended me and what an intolerable situation we were both in. When he understood the details, he realized that Geoffrey had outwitted all of us. He forgave us both.”
“And before he understood the details?”
Alexandra shrugged and looked away. “That phase didn’t last too long, thank God.”
Alan swallowed hard, wondering if he dared ask the question that was burning in his heart. Had his brother raped her? Despite what the sailor reported about their cordial relations, such a crime would be difficult to forgive. Was she truly content? Might she not welcome an excuse to leave?
Alexandra continued to regard him with wide, owlish eyes. She seemed to be considering something, weighing her words. At last she said, “Alan, I love him. I’ve loved him for a long time, and it’s finally penetrated his thick skull that he loves me too. We intend to wed.”
“You cannot marry him. He’s a criminal, an outlaw.”
She took his fingers in hers and pressed them hard. “I’m sorry.”
She knew that he wanted her for his own, Alan realized. He expected pity but found only compassion, affection, and that other familiar, sisterly sort of love. Silently he cursed her, cursed Roger. He wanted her as a woman, not a sister. Wanted her body writhing beneath him in bed, the way his brother had her. He hated Roger for taking her away from him.
Tearing his hands from hers, Alan rose and paced the room. It would pass, he told himself. It must. His passion for the widow in Oxford had passed, hadn’t it? He could still love Alix as he always had–as the friend of his youth and childhood. That, at least, could never be taken from him. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.
“So, what now? Does he intend to take you with him on this voyage to the Middle Sea?”
“Yes. We’ll go together.”
“And is that not a dangerous, indeed, a foolhardy thing to do? Suppose you were captured by corsairs? D’you wish to end your life as a slave in some Eastern infidel’s harem?”
Alexandra shrugged. She and Roger had had this identical argument several times. He did not want to take her on his voyage—there was danger, a good deal of danger. But neither did he want to be separated from her, and the truth was, she had nowhere else to go.
Seeing her hesitate, Alan quickly pressed his advantage. “Come back to England with me, Alix. Your place is there, with your home, your family. Do not give yourself over to a life of shame.”
“There is no shame in our love.” She spoke softly but with great conviction. “My place is here, with him.”
“Your father thinks differently. He wants you back, and he’s determined to have you back.”
“My father succeeded in keeping us apart for months. There’s no longer anything he can do.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. There is something he can do; indeed, he’s doing it. He has sent me here to tell you and your lover all about it.”
F
rightened by his tone, Alexandra jumped to her feet. “What do you mean? Explain.”
Alan tried to control his anger and his jealousy. “I’ll wait until Roger returns.”
Alexandra grabbed him by the forearms, her green eyes spitting determination. “You won’t. Roger has had enough to fret about lately. You’ll tell me now, whatever it is.”
Silently Alan reached into his doublet and withdrew a scroll of paper. He handed it to her. “This is a copy. The original is in your father’s hands. If you do not return to England within the next month, he’s going to turn it over to the ecclesiastical authorities.”
Alexandra began unrolling the paper. “Whatever this is, it will not work. I love Roger. We will be wed.”
“Read it.”
Grimacing, she did. The document was a warrant for the arrest of Richard Trevor, Baron of Whitcombe, on charges of heresy. “Oh sweet Jesu,” Alexandra whispered, looking up. She managed to focus on Alan, who was hovering over her.
“The reasoning behind it is simple. You are Roger’s hostage. My father is Sir Charles’ hostage. He offers a trade. If Roger refuses, Sir Charles will see to it that my father—and Roger’s—is tried for heresy and burned at the stake.”
Chapter 30
“He can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid he is.”
“Oh God…” She remembered her father’s face that awful dawn on the riverbank. Never, never had she seen him look like that. “You say the baron is his hostage; do you mean he has already arrested him?”
“No. My father knows nothing of this as yet. He is old and sick. Before I left England I heard from Dorcas that he had suffered another heart seizure. He could not endure the hardship of imprisonment, the anxiety of a trial. Not to mention the dishonor. He has suffered enough already at Roger’s hands.”
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