The Maiden's Hand

by Susan Wiggs

  “They will make you leave soon. I feel as if I should speak some great truth that will make this all come right somehow. But for the life of me, I cannot think of a blessed thing.”

  The door opened. Neither looked to see who had entered the room. The silence between them spoke volumes.

  And then the guards in their splendid livery were leading her away, and a huge roar burst from his throat.

  “Lark!”

  She turned, broke away from her escort, and Oliver embraced her. With all his heart he wanted to beg, to recant, to betray all the secrets he knew.

  He looked into Lark’s face. And it was there that he found his strength. He kissed her lingeringly, imprinting the taste of her on his memory. Then he pulled back. “I do not wonder what heaven is like, my love. I know.”

  He sensed her frantic fear, but she held it in check. “You do?”

  “I am that rare, fortunate man who found it on earth. Right here with you in my arms.” He kissed the palm of her hand and closed her fist around it. “I have no memento to give you except this.”

  They held hands even as she backed away toward the door. He gripped her hard enough to hurt, squeezing his eyes shut. Love flowed like a river between them, and the miracle of it lit his soul with fire. Their fingers slid apart at last, and the guards guided her out the door.

  Oliver stood alone in the empty silence. Yet he was not alone, for even after she had been torn from him, he still kept the ache where he had gripped her hand.

  Sensing a presence behind her, Lark jumped up from the writing table and faced the door.

  Moving with catlike grace, Wynter entered the room, an office on the main floor of Wimberleigh House.

  “You might have asked to be announced,” she said coldly. It was a wonder that she had any voice left to speak. Upon arriving home, she had wept, tearing at the bedclothes, screaming with sobs until her voice was hoarse. She and Belinda had sat up all the night through to find a way to save Oliver. Their plan was desperate, and it hinged on a precise timing of events that did not include a visit from Wynter.

  “I did ask,” Wynter said with his charming, deceitful smile. “I was told you would not receive me.”

  “You were told correctly. Did you slay my footman where he stood, or did you simply beat him senseless?”

  Wynter laughed. “You know me better than that.”

  She did. There had been a time when Wynter had ruled her, made her feel insignificant and weak, and given her the irresistible urge to seek his favor.

  Knowing Oliver had changed that. Even as she formed the thought, she edged around so that her full skirts, made fuller by her huge belly, concealed the letters on the desk. She gritted her teeth in frustration. She had spent the entire morning working out the details of her plan with Belinda. She could not afford to be caught now. Today was the day Oliver would be taken to burn at Smithfield.

  “You planned that meeting yesterday, thinking that taking me to see Oliver would cause him to break,” she said, her voice poisoned by venom.

  Oliver’s steadfastness had astonished her. Yesterday she had seen her husband—truly seen him—in a new light. His blithe manner, his nonchalance, were all a calculated act. Deep within him dwelt a steely core of unbreachable honor. He was a champion in the guise of court jester.

  His dignity had given her the strength to leave the Tower with composure, not to shame her husband with a display of fruitless wailing and pleading before his captors.

  “I want you to come with me,” said Wynter.

  “Where?”

  “To St. James’s Palace. And then to watch the execution.”

  Her heart knocked against her breastbone. The queen was at the palace, having traveled there in recent weeks from Hampton Court. Perhaps Lark could find her. See her. Beg for a reprieve.

  “I shall come.” The instant Wynter turned away, she snatched her letter and shoved it into her sleeve.

  She had known the palace would be grand. She had known it would be an anthill of activity, crawling with ministers, clerks, pages, nobles, servants. None of them cared that a man was about to be executed. The only man in the world who mattered to her.

  But she was unprepared for Wynter’s behavior. They arrived almost furtively, accompanied only by a pair of Spanish-speaking guards and stealing like thieves into the palace through the water gate. Wynter had made much of his status at court; now she suspected he had overstated his own importance.

  He pulled her along through narrow, poorly lit passageways.

  They headed down a half-open gallery and wound their way up a narrow tower staircase, leaving the blank-eyed guards at the foot of the stairs.

  At the first landing, an arrow loop invited in the late-October gloom, and Lark felt a twinge of unease. “I want to see the palace warden.”

  For a moment Wynter simply stared at her. And his look, which used to have the power to send her scurrying for cover, only increased her impatience.

  “Well?” she prompted.

  She saw it then, the flicker of ill will in his face, but he quickly blinked it away. “So you shall, my lady. In due time.”

  “Now.”

  Her tone must have startled him, for his eyes narrowed and he took a step back.

  Yes, she thought in dark triumph, I have changed. Her will was stronger than his. So was her desperation. Before leaving Wimberleigh House, she had furtively given the letter up her sleeve to Nance, begging the servant to convey it to Belinda.

  “Pardon me,” she said, brushing past him, starting back down the stairs.

  Wynter’s hand shot out, clamping like a vise around her upper arm. So remote was the dark tower that no one heard Lark scream.

  Dressed in a nun’s habit, Belinda de Lacey committed several crimes. She lied through her perfect white teeth to get into the Tower of London, she pilfered a warden’s keys while pretending to pray in schoolgirl Latin, and she cursed like a tanner’s brat when she burst into the straw-strewn cell of the Lieutenant’s Lodgings and found no one.

  The desperate plan was going awry.

  Belinda’s fine stream of oaths, delivered with equal fluency in English and Russian, was interrupted by a muffled groan.

  “Who’s there?” she demanded, peering into the shadows.

  The groan sounded again, and she realized it came from behind the door. In her haste, she had flung open the door and thumped her victim almost senseless.

  “Are you all right?” She pulled the poor wretch upright. Orange torch glow slanted across his bearded face.

  “Kit!” she said on a sob. “Dear God!”

  He blinked. “Belinda? Jesu, have you taken vows?”

  “Not that sort, my love.” Even as she spoke, she drew another costume from the voluminous folds of her robe. “Here, put this on. Be quick. Where’s Oliver?”

  “I don’t know. They never brought him back here.”

  She swore again. “Can you walk?”

  “Sweetheart, for you I would run like the wind.”

  She felt a surge of affection but spared only a second to kiss him. “When did they take my brother away?”

  Kit dropped the kersey robe over himself and kicked at the hem. “I lost count of the days. Ah, Belinda, how did you get here?”

  “I’ll tell you later. We—Lark and I—have been trying for months to see you. Each time, we were thwarted. I only wish we could have succeeded before they took Oliver away. What of Dr. Snipes?”

  “Dead.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the sting of rage and futility. “God rest his soul.”

  “What sort of costume is this?” he asked, shaking out the wide sleeves of his robe.

  “A nun’s habit, like mine.” She held out the wimple and veil. When he shrank back, she whispered, “Be not an infant, Kit Youngblood. I went to some lot of trouble to arrange your escape. This is the only way I’m going to get you out of here.” She slid the veil into place, hiding his hair, drawing the wimple forward to shadow hi
s bearded face.

  Several minutes later, a drunk stumbled out of a tavern in St. Katherine’s Lane and nearly collided with the oddest pair of nuns he had ever seen. They raced toward the river with their robes hiked to their knees, starched wimples flapping, veils flying out behind them.

  At the top of the water steps, the nuns stopped running, embraced each other and kissed. Passionately.

  The drunk shuddered and turned away. “Yech,” he muttered, spitting into the ditch. “Catholics!”

  “You’re mad,” Lark said to Wynter. Yet even as she said it, she knew he was deadly sane. “What possible good can it do for you to keep me here?”

  He smiled and looked around the room. The appointments were sparse but adequate, the floor was clean, and coals glowed in a brazier on a tall brass stand by the window. “Don’t you know?” he asked. “I’m offering you a chance to save your husband’s life.”

  “Since when have you been granted the power of reprieve—over someone you caused to be arrested in the first place?”

  “You’d be surprised at the liberties I’ve been granted.”

  “By whom?”

  He did not answer. “When is your baby due, Lark?”

  The chill of fear scudded over her afresh, but unlike the past, this time she did not let herself become quiescent with terror. “Perhaps a fortnight.”

  “Interesting,” he said, taking a few feline steps forward. “That is when the queen is expecting the heir to the throne.”

  Now Lark felt not just a chill, but an icy blast of sheer horror. God in heaven. Wynter wanted to steal her child and give it to the queen. He was mad. By now, everyone knew the queen was dying. News of her illness caused people to gather outside the palace, awaiting the fateful pronouncement. Queen Mary had not even seen her husband in over a year.

  Lark crossed to the tower window, tall and narrow with colorless glass that made everything outside appear wavy. Pretending it was the cold air she felt, she moved close to the brazier. Even the red-hot coals, glowing like angry eyes, failed to warm her.

  She remembered what Princess Elizabeth had said at Hatfield. The queen’s desire for a child had become the subject of gossip all over London. Lark had thought the sly hints about stealing another woman’s child a cruel jest, but the horrible twist of dread in her gut told her Wynter was not jesting.

  “What say you?” he asked, his voice like warm treacle. He was standing directly behind her. “Shall I send word that the traitor de Lacey be spared? I could, you know.”

  At that moment Lark experienced something so dark and forbidden that she despised herself. Just for a moment she wanted to say yes. Yes, take the child, this little stranger, just give me my husband!

  The thought was as fierce and painful as the thrust of a lance. She loved Oliver too much.

  And then, as quickly as it had come, the thought subsided. Give up her child? Let it be given, in a lie, to England as an heir?

  That was madness.

  “Of course,” Wynter said in his beautiful voice, “Oliver de Lacey would have to go into hiding. You’d have no need of Blackrose Priory then, would you?”

  “Blackrose. It always comes to that, doesn’t it, Wynter?”

  “It should have been mine, Father!” With a lightning motion, he slammed both hands on the table. A storm swirled in his night-dark eyes.

  She bit her lip to stifle a gasp. What a strange but telling slip of the tongue. Just for a moment she pitied Wynter, deprived of a father’s love, hungering for it.

  “Do you want Blackrose?” she asked. “Very well. It is yours.” She wondered if, somewhere in the far beyond, Spencer disapproved, but she did not care. Her passion for Oliver guided her now, not rote lessons pounded into her over the years. She wanted to beg Wynter to accept her offer, but she looked at his taut, pale face and knew that was where he wanted her—weak, helpless, promising him anything, just as she had once before.

  “You can’t even begin to know what I want.” He moved as he spoke, coming nearer and nearer. The wind slipped frigid fingers in through the cracks around the window. Lark could see the sky, bleak and clouded with the coming winter. She felt his breath, warm on the back of her neck, and she squeezed her eyes shut, gritting her teeth.

  No, no, no…

  Then his lips were there, barely grazing the skin at the nape of her neck. “It’s a long drop to the bottom,” he said. He spoke the same words in the same silky whisper as he had…before.

  A wave of desperation hurled her into the past, to another stone-walled chamber with a high window, and Wynter standing, just as he was now, behind her. The dizziness came on like a hive of bees suddenly disturbed. Her palms began to sweat, and she curled her hands into fists.

  You want me, Lark. I can see it in your eyes when you look at me.

  “I told you no!” she whispered fiercely.

  Now, as then, he trailed his finger down the side of her throat. “You never said no, Lark. And you will not say it now. You still think about it, don’t you? You still think about that night and how you surrendered to me.”

  The past came roaring back, and the hideous shame rolled over her. A sob caught in her throat. She swayed toward the window. She could escape that way. She could find a place of oblivion, where she would no longer feel horror at the sin she had committed, would never again weep for Oliver.

  “No!” She whirled to face Wynter. Even now she had to deny the truth or she would burn in hell. “You forced me!”

  He smiled, leaning closer, his sinister scent of ambergris reminding her of the past. “Nay, Lark. You remember as well as I do. You begged me—”

  “I begged you to—to—” She broke off, and the memories battered at her. The fog in her mind parted like heavy curtains, and for the first time she saw what had really happened that night. Finally, after all the years of hiding in shame, she faced the truth. “I begged you to love me,” she said, feeling nausea push into her throat. “God forgive me, but I did.”

  “Aye, Lark, and so it shall be again.” He reached for her.

  The past shattered like a window exploding in a storm. Simply speaking the truth at last set her free. She had begged him. She had let him take her body, fill her with his vengeful, seductive lust, and she had cried out with the terrible ecstasy of it. She could admit that now, after all this time. Rather than condemning her to the darkness, the truth brought her into the light. He had exerted his power over her; she had succumbed. For Wynter, it had been an act of hatred against his father. Lark had simply been the object of his defiance.

  The shame went away, because she had found Oliver, who loved her honestly and unconditionally, would love her even if he knew.

  In that moment, facing her tormentor, she was possessed of such a dark, violent loathing that she didn’t even seem to know herself anymore.

  “You don’t frighten me anymore,” she told him, her anger burning as hot as the coals in the brazier. “You’ve lost that hold over me.”

  “Then you’re a fool, little Lark.” Even before he finished speaking, he lunged, arms outstretched, ready to snatch and imprison her.

  “No!” She took hold of the brazier by its base and swung it in a wide arc. The glowing coals flew at him.

  Lark heard his animal bellow of rage and pain. Racing madly, she leaped for the door and wrenched it open. She plunged down the narrow stairs. With fleeting relief, she saw that the guards had departed. The halls and galleries of the palace sped past in a blur.

  As she rushed by an open window with a view of the river and marshes, she had only one lucid thought.

  Oliver.

  She stumbled in her ungainly haste, sinking down on one knee. She had to escape, had to reach Oliver before—

  “Stop!” Wynter’s hoarse yell rang down the open gallery.

  Lark picked up her skirts and ran, a lumbering run, her awkward bulk slowing her down. She was lost in the palace, lost in the gloomy halls and cramped apartments. Her only aim was to get away, to get to Oli
ver somehow, to stop them from murdering him.

  She took every turn and staircase she encountered. She came to a narrow passageway leading to a lightless hole.

  One door across the corridor stood ajar.

  Footsteps flayed the stone floor behind her.

  Swallowing a sob of despair, she slipped through the door. The room was a chapel, small and elegant as a jewel, with two tapers burning and the host ensconced in a monstrance.

  Lark blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. On a prayer stool in front of the altar, a lone figure knelt.

  Lark gasped and pressed her knuckles to her mouth.

  The woman turned slowly as if the motion caused her pain. Her face might have been handsome once, but it was white and pinched now, the eyes glassy, the lips bluish.

  In her horror, Lark forgot to breathe, to move. Then, somehow recovering, she sank to the floor in the deepest curtsy she could manage.

  “Your Majesty!” she said in a tremulous voice.

  Queen Mary held out her hand.

  Seventeen

  “What do you mean, you lost her?” Bishop Edmund Bonner glared at Wynter. “I thought it was a simple enough task, even for you.”

  Wynter hitched back his shoulders. Bonner’s censure stung more than the hot coals Lark had flung at him. Wynter knew he looked and smelled abominable. Some of the coals had hit him in the face, raising blisters, one at the corner of his eye. The bitch had almost blinded him. Other coals had singed his hair and bored holes in his garments.

  “My lord bishop, the woman is clearly mad. I could not have known how viciously she would attack me.”

  “You might have at least had a guard or a servant standing by.”

  “I had to be careful, you know that,” Wynter snapped. “I dared only use those two bumbling Spaniards, and she slipped right past them—or else they turned a blind eye.”

  “You never did quite learn whom to trust, did you, my lord?” Bonner’s face was blunt and coarse, totally unforgiving. He, perhaps more than any other man of the realm, had reason to want a Catholic heir to the throne, not the wily, inconstant Elizabeth, who had the audacity to think for herself.