Traitor Angels

by Anne Blankman

  Robert looked away, the muscles in his neck working as he swallowed. “He has already broken mine by refusing to recognize me as his heir. I’m only taking what rightfully belongs to me,” he answered. “Row!” he snapped at the men. At once they dipped their oars into the water.

  So Father was definitely still alive. My heart swelled, pressing against the cage of my ribs.

  I waited for Robert to ask Mr. Pepys where Thomas Farriner’s bakeshop was located—heaven knew there must be dozens of bakeshops in London. But Robert said nothing more. Perhaps the name Farriner was known to him.

  My hands fisted in my skirts. Even if I managed to get away from these men, I couldn’t find Mr. Farriner’s bakeshop and my father before they did.

  I would have to stay with them.

  Through the thinning mist, the shore came into focus: a shallow, muddy ditch and, beyond that, a road and the humped shapes of hovels. We must have rowed to the street lining the western side of the moat, known as Tower Ditch. The area was the sort of maze inhabited by the wretchedly poor: crooked lanes, twisting alleys, and passageways that seemed to double back on themselves.

  “Return Mr. Pepys to his house.” Robert pointed past the rowers. “He lives in Seething Lane, in the grouping of buildings reserved for Royal Navy officials.”

  Our boat felt as though it were being pulled across the water by invisible hands, so steady and smooth was our progress. I watched the lip of the ditch rear up in the darkness until our boat bumped into it. Sir Gauden leaped onto the shore, then leaned down, extending his hand for me to take.

  “Come, Miss Milton,” he said. “Aren’t you eager to see your father again?”

  Glaring at him, I took his hand and jumped to the shore. The marshy land sucked at my shoes when I landed. From far away, footsteps rang out on cobblestones.

  “Hurry, we have a carriage waiting.” Sir Gauden tugged my arm.

  I looked over my shoulder. The rest of the men had clambered ashore. The two rowers were walking away, gripping Mr. Pepys between them by the arms. That left only me, Gauden, and Robert. Two against one wasn’t insurmountable—provided I could lay my hands on a weapon.

  My legs felt like blocks of wood as I pushed them forward. One step. Another. The soggy ground hardened into oyster shells and rocks embedded in mud, a poor man’s road. A black carriage waited a few yards away; I recognized it as Robert’s from its coat of arms.

  Inside the carriage everything was made of shadows: Sir Gauden lounging on the padded seat; the leather curtains covering the windows, leaving only a sliver of moonlight showing around the edges. As I sat down, Robert jumped in after me. He settled next to me so closely that every breath I took tasted of his rosewater cologne. My stomach heaved.

  The carriage rolled forward. Robert stretched out a ringed hand to raise the curtain. Outside, no lanterns had been lit; the street was left black. The tumbledown houses passed in a blur. Somewhere church bells rang the hour, a solemn single note reverberating in the warm air. It was the first hour of the Lord’s morning. Farther off I could hear the roar of the river’s receding tide, then the groan of the massive waterwheels beneath London Bridge. All else was quiet: the tippling houses and gaming rooms had already been closed.

  The carriage lurched to a stop. Before it had even finished rocking, Robert and Sir Gauden had pulled the door open and leaped to the street. I jumped down after them.

  I found myself standing in the middle of a narrow lane lined with wooden houses. Most of them were only a room or two wide but towered five or six stories high in a series of additions, the jetties projecting out so far they nearly touched those of the houses opposite. They blacked out the stars, leaving the lane in complete darkness save for a couple of candles sputtering in windows.

  That illumination was all the light I needed as I scanned the buildings, seeking a sign with a painted loaf of bread that would tell me we had found Mr. Farriner’s bakeshop. I saw a cradle for a basket maker, a unicorn’s horn for an apothecary, and a coffin for a carpenter. No bread, but I did recognize my surroundings, for I had walked this neighborhood with my father many times: we stood in Pudding Lane.

  Somewhere in the distance sounded the rattle of carriage wheels on paving stones. I ignored the noise, continuing to peer at the houses. Across the lane a weathered sign hanging from the first story of a ramshackle wooden structure creaked in the breeze. A loaf of bread was painted across its surface.

  This must be it.

  I dashed across the lane. I pulled at the heavy wooden door, but it didn’t budge. It was locked. Even as I yanked again on the handle, Sir Gauden pushed me aside.

  “Get away!” I cried, but he ignored me.

  He hacked at the lock with his knife. Robert was watching him closely. His trembling hand gripped my shoulder. “I visited this place once,” he said without looking at me. “Mr. Farriner hadn’t been paid in a timely manner, and my uncle thought if my brother and I called upon him, the gesture might engender his goodwill—and keep our ships supplied with Mr. Farriner’s biscuits.” His laugh sounded bitter. “I daresay my uncle forgot the errand or he would have convinced my father to have yours kept elsewhere. But James and I aren’t important enough for our deeds to be repeated to our father. For once, it seems to have worked in my favor.”

  The scream of wood and iron giving way tore through the air. The bakehouse’s door hung drunkenly in its frame, the wood surrounding the lock gouged and splintered. With a bow, Sir Gauden stepped back.

  “Good work.” Robert’s face had tightened into a grim mask. He strode through the doorway with me dogging his heels. Whatever I did, I couldn’t let him get to my father first.

  Inside, the darkness was as impenetrable as stone. I had to move slowly, bracing a hand on the wall for guidance. We had to be in a hall, for I sensed no furniture. My fingers drifted across a series of pegs, accidentally knocking a cap to the floor.

  I had to slip away from Robert and Sir Gauden. The bakeshop itself should be in a separate structure from the home, likely in a backyard. If I had understood Mr. Pepys correctly, then that must be where my father was being held.

  We shuffled across the room, keeping to the walls. The room remained black, and no creaks sounded from the staircase. No one was coming, then. So much the better. I could find a way to fight Robert and Gauden without the fear of anyone interrupting us.

  My hip brushed something hard—a table, I guessed, for it continued for a few feet as I squeezed my body past it. Ahead of me, Robert fumbled with something. Metal rattled. He opened a door and disappeared beyond it.

  I darted after him and found myself outside. Here the starlight tumbled down unobstructed, showing me a small yard lined with stacks of brushwood. A few paces away stood what must be the bakehouse—a little wooden building, its windows black with night.

  I broke into a run. Robert raced alongside me. We reached the door at the same instant and I flung my arm out, catching him square in the chest. He fell back a step, gasping in surprise. I threw the door open and dashed inside, shouting, “Father! It’s me!”

  In the bakehouse something gray coated everything in sight: the floor, the tables, the frame of the single window. Squinting in the sudden wash of darkness, I peered around the place, seeking the shadow that might be my father.

  Someone grabbed me from behind. I fought him, kicking and hitting, my heel connecting with his shin. He staggered, then fell hard, taking me down with him. We collapsed in a tangle of limbs.

  It was Sir Gauden; I recognized the scent of his cologne. His elbow jabbed my eye. For an instant, all I could see were starbursts of color, forming and reforming in front of me. Half-blinded, I scrambled onto my hands and knees. Gauden kicked me in the ribs. Pain exploded in my side. I grabbed his ankle, jerking as hard as I could. He stumbled a little, then slithered from my grasp. Gritting my teeth, I clutched at the nearest table, using it to pull myself up. Dimly I sensed him rushing past me, deeper into the interior of the bakehouse.

 
; A scraping sound reached my ears. I spun around. Robert had followed me inside, too, and was thrusting something into an oven. It was a large brick opening set directly into the wall. Its bottom was littered with twigs and ashes. Among them a single spark glowed orange-red.

  Robert pulled out the item he had pushed into the oven, and I saw what it was: a paper twist, its edges flickering yellow with flame. He must have grabbed it from the basket of kindling and twists on the ground by the door. Quickly, he used the paper to light a candle sitting on a table. Its illumination threw lines of gold onto his face. In the moment since I had last seen him in the yard, he must have lost his wig. Without his familiar tumble of brown curls he looked like a new person: older, thinner, his shorn head shining white. His expression was impassive as he placed the candle inside a lantern, then closed the glass door and set the lantern on a table.

  In its flickering glow I could see the bakehouse more clearly. It was one small room, its walls blackened with soot, its floor and three trestle tables coated with a film of flour as gray as long-dried ash. Several barrels stood stacked against the far wall. A pallet lay on the floor behind the tables. Sitting motionless upon it was my father.

  He looked exhausted. Wrinkles scored his cheeks and forehead more deeply than when I had seen him last. Flour dusted his black clothes, like snow on tar. His hair hung about his face in uncombed knots.

  “Father!” My harsh cry seemed to burst directly from my throat. I rushed toward him.

  Sir Gauden emerged from the shadows behind my father. Before I could shout a warning, he had dropped to his knees and laid the flat of his blade against my father’s throat. I skidded to a halt.

  “Elizabeth!” my father called out. “Is that you?”

  When he spoke, the skin of his throat rippled, nicked by the edge of the sword. A few drops of blood welled up, then slid across the gleaming blade like balls of red glass.

  “Don’t hurt him!” I shouted. “Please!”

  “Oh, I don’t want to hurt him,” Robert said.

  Something in his tone turned the blood in my veins to ice. Slowly I turned to look at him. He stood between the tables, toying with the latch on the lantern’s glass door. “I want,” he said softly, “to hurt you.”

  I gasped as I realized what he meant. He hadn’t been able to break me when he had deprived me of food and drink—so he would break my father instead. He would torture me until my father shattered and confessed he had hidden something in Mr. Hade’s home.

  “Father,” I shouted, “no matter what they do to me, you must stay silent! Do you understand?”

  “Elizabeth!” my father rasped out. “Get out of here—they’ll try to kill you!”

  “I won’t leave you!” I yelled.

  The door crashed open behind me. I whirled around. Standing in the doorway, his chest straining with labored breaths, was Antonio. On either side of him stood Lady Katherine and Thomasine, daggers glinting in their hands.

  Thirty-One

  THE ROOM FROZE. I COULDN’T TEAR MY EYES FROM Antonio. He looked terrible. The color had drained from his face, leaving it bone white. His hair fell to his shoulders in a wild tangle. A bruise stretched sickly yellow fingers along the length of his jaw. He was still dressed in the clothes he had been wearing when I last saw him; now the black satin breeches were wrinkled, and dirt streaked the front of his intricately stitched doublet. He held a sword at the ready.

  When our eyes locked, he let out a shuddering breath. “Elizabeth!”

  “Get out.” My voice was so rough I didn’t recognize it as my own.

  Bewilderment flickered across his face. “What—”

  “Silence!” Robert thundered.

  In the lantern light, Antonio looked pale and exhausted. His eyes, though, were unblinking as they focused on Robert. “You,” he growled with such venom that the hairs on the back of my neck rose. “I could rip you limb from limb for what you did to Elizabeth.”

  “Your betrayal was far worse.” Robert smiled slightly when Antonio started.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “His Grace tricked me!” Lady Katherine cried. “I swear to you, Miss Milton, I didn’t understand what I was doing! His Grace told me to ask Mr. Viviani what he would do with Galileo’s vial if your father hadn’t been imprisoned. His Grace was waiting in the next room, and he coughed when he heard you coming, which was the signal for me to pose the question to Mr. Viviani.”

  Antonio’s words, uttered before we left for the ball, rushed back to me: Signor Galilei’s discovery is a powerful tool against the Church. . . . If I brought it to the officials in Rome and promised to keep it quiet in return for Signor Galilei’s pardon, I’m certain they would agree.

  He had said “if.” It could have been idle chatter. Not a plan to steal the vial in an attempt to salvage Galileo’s reputation. Just a response to Lady Katherine’s hypothetical question. Even now I could hear her asking, If Miss Milton’s father hadn’t been captured, I wonder what we could have done with Galileo’s secret. What do you think, Mr. Viviani?

  Antonio had responded precisely in the manner I would have expected from him—indeed, precisely as Robert had hoped. And his words had pulled us apart, making it easier for Robert to manipulate us.

  Not once had Antonio suggested stealing the vial.

  “Then it was all a trick!” I breathed. “Antonio didn’t betray me.”

  Robert blinked, a slow shuttering of his lids over eyes as cool as glass. He didn’t speak. I whirled around. Antonio hadn’t moved from the door. The hand holding his sword had begun to tremble, but whether from emotion or fatigue I couldn’t tell. His voice cracked when he said my name. “Elizabeth, I promise I wouldn’t deceive you—”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Lady Katherine interrupted, throwing a scornful look at Robert. “His Grace returned from the ball full of stories. He said you and he had been separated in Buckingham’s garden. Mr. Viviani didn’t believe him and attacked His Grace.”

  “You need to shut your mouth,” Robert growled. He rushed toward them, but Antonio jumped in front of Lady Katherine, sweeping his blade. Robert leaped back. His face darkened.

  “You might manage to slay me before I draw my weapon,” Robert spat. “But you’ll never get out of London alive. Once my men know I’m missing or dead, they’ll move Heaven and Hell to avenge me. You’re already as good as dead, Florentine.”

  “Then I’ll die fighting,” Antonio said.

  Pride fired in my heart—a hot conflagration that pushed against my ribs, eager to escape. My Antonio, with his dear, tired face. His broad shoulders that sagged with exhaustion, his voice that cracked with strain. And yet he stayed. A hundred times he could have returned to Florence, but he hadn’t. I had vanished, and he had remained. For my sake. I knew it by the way his eyes flickered over to mine, tracing my face as if he wanted to remember it forever.

  “And I’ll fight beside you,” I said to him.

  Antonio gave me a relieved smile. He’d just started to speak when my father called from the back of the bakehouse, “Take heed, daughter! I hear someone moving!”

  Robert was edging toward the back of the building, away from me and Antonio. He scowled at Sir Gauden. “Keep Milton quiet, can’t you!”

  My father was still sitting on the pallet, his neck bared for Gauden’s blade. A shallow red line marred the skin of his throat. My eyes flew to Robert. “Don’t move,” I said.

  “Your father’s the only person I see in mortal danger,” he growled. “You’d be wise not to anger me.”

  “Kill him and you’ve lost the chance to learn the secret of Paradise Lost.”

  Annoyance flitted across Robert’s face. Instead of responding, he glanced at Lady Katherine. “Indulge my curiosity, my lady. How did you know to come here tonight? I myself was unaware of Mr. Milton’s hiding place until a short while ago.”

  The dagger in her hand shook so badly it had become a silver blur, glinting against the pale pink of her g
own. “For the last two nights, Mr. Viviani has haunted Whitehall’s gates in the hope you would leave and lead us to Miss Milton. Tonight, when he saw you and a group of your courtiers riding out, he followed at a distance. As soon as he saw you rowing across the Tower moat, he raced to me and Thomasine. We sped to the Tower in my carriage, reaching it just as all of you entered your coach. I am gladder than words can express that we returned in time to see Miss Milton, but”—she hesitated, her lips compressing into a line, as if she were trying to hold in her tears—“but I wish with every particle of my being that we had been wrong about who had imprisoned her.”

  Something warm spread from my chest down my arms and legs, pooling in the spaces between my bones until all of my body felt alive and thrumming from it. My friends hadn’t abandoned me. Every moment I had spent in a cell, they had been seeking me. Not once had I been alone. Not once.

  “I’ve grown weary of all of your voices.” Robert, his eyes flat, glanced at Sir Gauden. “Mr. Milton, you have until the count of ten to tell me about the secret in your poem or I will throw my dagger into your daughter’s chest.” He paused. “I have excellent aim.”

  “I beg of you, don’t!” my father cried. Gauden yanked his hair, forcing his head back. He pressed the point of his sword into my father’s throat, digging so hard a small red circle welled up.

  “Say nothing, Father!” I yelled.

  I raced around the table toward Robert. His eyes widened with surprise, and he fumbled with the sword at his waist. Before he had unsheathed it, I cracked him across the face as hard as I could. He let out a startled cry and staggered a few steps away, cupping his nose. Lines of blood snaked between his fingers; in the dimness, they looked black.

  “I’m safe!” I started to shout to Father just as Robert yelled, “Kill her! I want her dead!”