Traitor Angels

by Anne Blankman

  “No!” Father screamed. “The secret is hidden in Mr. Hade’s home! It’s a map—a map of the exact location of the cave outside Padua where Galileo found the sunken meteor!”

  The room seemed to hold its breath. Robert’s hands fell from his nose. Blood continued to gush from it, and when he spoke, blood dripped off his mouth. “Ah, Elizabeth’s old weapons instructor who lives on London Bridge. Very clever.” He glanced at Sir Gauden. “Now kill him.”

  “No!” I screamed. Dimly I heard Antonio shout something. From the corner of my eye, I saw him racing toward my father and Sir Gauden. Twenty paces distant. He would never reach them in time; already Gauden was bringing the sword down in a silver arc. Ten paces away. I whirled around and shouted at Lady Katherine, “Throw me your dagger! Now!”

  Her mouth dropped open in surprise, but she obeyed, flinging the dagger at me. I caught it by the handle and spun around. The sword was descending toward my father’s neck; he was struggling in Gauden’s grasp, his face white with terror. I didn’t hesitate. I threw the dagger as hard as I could at Sir Gauden.

  It embedded itself in his upper arm. Only the silver hilt, studded with jewels, showed. Gauden’s eyes bulged; his mouth gaped like that of a fish. He clapped a hand to his arm, trying to pull the dagger out, and let his sword fall to the dirt floor with a soft thump.

  Antonio reached them. He pulled his arm back, winding up for a blow, then plowed his fist into Gauden’s eye. Gauden crumpled at once. As he fell, he collapsed against my father, knocking him to the floor.

  “Father! Are you all right?” I dropped to my knees, scrabbling at Sir Gauden’s body.

  Antonio helped me tug Gauden’s limp form off my father’s body. We dumped Gauden unceremoniously on the floor, where he lay motionless, still unconscious. As my father struggled to sit up, I wrapped my arm around his waist, steadying him. His familiar scent of tobacco and wool, now mixed with flour and grease, wafted over me, and a lump rose in my throat.

  “Father,” I managed to say, but couldn’t push any more words out of my mouth.

  “Where’s the Duke of Lockton?” he gasped. “Don’t let him get away!”

  I looked over my shoulder. Robert had hurried to the bakehouse door, but Lady Katherine and Thomasine stood in front of him, blocking his way out. From the back, the line of his shoulders looked rod straight.

  “Don’t cross me,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Please don’t go.” Tears shone in Lady Katherine’s eyes. “I love you, Your Grace. Robert. Don’t retrieve this map, I beg of you.”

  He shifted slightly, so I could see his profile. Blood now coated his mouth; his lips looked as though they had been painted red. “Get out of my way!” He grabbed Lady Katherine’s arm, trying to yank her aside, but she stood firm.

  “No!” she shouted. “I won’t let you go so that you can ruin your soul!”

  Metal rang out as Robert drew his sword. Even as I relinquished my grip on my father and started to rise, Robert thrust his weapon forward in one smooth movement. The sword buried itself up to the hilt in Lady Katherine’s stomach. She looked down, vague surprise registering on her face.

  “What . . . ?” she whispered.

  Time seemed to stop. Unable to understand what had just happened, I stared at Lady Katherine. Her face had gone white, and worry creased the ordinarily smooth skin of her forehead. She lifted a trembling hand to her cheek, pushing away a stray curl, as if she needed to see better in order to comprehend what had occurred.

  Robert pulled out the sword. Its blade was stained scarlet, glimmers of silver showing in a couple of places that hadn’t been slicked with Lady Katherine’s blood. It clattered onto the ground, flinging droplets of blood in every direction. Robert let out a shaky breath.

  Lady Katherine sagged against the wall. Her mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. A red hole had appeared in the pink silk of her bodice; even as I watched, it widened, spreading out on either side of her navel, like a nightmarish version of an embrace. Slowly she slid to the ground, leaving a long, dark smear on the flour-streaked wooden slats. Her body began to shake, her feet drumming a rapid tattoo on the dirt.

  Robert stared down at her, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. His eyes were dark and grim; his mouth was set in a thin line.

  Beside him, Lady Katherine’s head lolled on her neck. Thomasine threw herself onto her knees beside her mistress’s body, sobbing and chafing Lady Katherine’s hands. Robert backed away, his eyes panicked, his lower lip trembling. I felt rather than saw Antonio stand next to me, for I couldn’t look at him; all I could see was Lady Katherine’s mouth continuing to open and close without making a sound.

  I let myself sink down next to her. Her lips were still moving. She was saying something, a whisper so faint I had to rest my ear against her mouth to hear it.

  “Robert?” she murmured, sounding confused. I jerked my head around. Robert was lurking in the shadows at the far side of the room, near my father. His head was bowed.

  “Where’s the vial?” I shouted.

  Robert looked at me, his eyes glazed with shock. “The vial?”

  “Yes, the vial, curse you! Lady Katherine is dying, and its contents will save her!” When he did nothing, I yelled, “Don’t you care about your betrothed?”

  His face changed then—a tightening of the muscles along his jaw, perhaps, something so subtle I couldn’t tell exactly how the transformation had taken place. But he had become calm. With the heel of his hand, he wiped at the blood on his mouth, leaving dark streaks fanning out from either side of his lips.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “I care for her.” He paused. “But I care about myself more.” He ran a careful hand down the front of his doublet, smoothing it. Bloody lines from the tips of his fingers now marred the satin, scarlet-black on yellow. Through the fabric I could see the vial’s slender outline; he was carrying it close to his heart, as Sir Vaughan’s assistant had.

  Antonio took a step toward him. “Give it to us!”

  “No,” Lady Katherine murmured. “I don’t want it.”

  Pink bubbles dribbled out of her mouth and down her chin. Her insides must be awash in blood, with nowhere for the welling substance to go but out.

  “Help her!” I shouted at Robert. “Give us the vial or we’ll take it by force!”

  “You heard my lady,” he said. He looked at me then, his eyes hooded by the faint candlelight. “She doesn’t want it.”

  Antonio’s hand brushed mine. “Elizabeth, he’s right. We can’t treat Lady Katherine against her will.”

  I jerked away from him. “She’s ill—she doesn’t know what she’s saying!”

  “Elizabeth.” There was an immeasurable sadness in Antonio’s face. “She knows.”

  Blinking hard, I rested my hand on Lady Katherine’s cheek, praying my touch gave her comfort.

  “The Lord is my shepherd,” Thomasine said through her tears. With a lurch of my heart, I realized she was giving Lady Katherine her last rites. Beneath my cheek, Lady Katherine’s cheek went slack. I waited for it to rise with another breath.

  There was none.

  A ragged cry hurled itself up my throat. I jumped to my feet, seeking Robert in the shadows. Near the far wall lay Gauden, still motionless, and close to him crouched my father, his head swiveling as he tried to make sense of the sounds within the bakehouse.

  Robert had moved. Now he stood between the trestle tables, his head hanging, his shorn skull shining white in the dimness. His hands gripped the lantern’s handle.

  At my side, Antonio raised his sword. “It’s over, Robert. You have no friends left. Surrender or I’ll be forced to hurt you.”

  Robert’s eyes flashed onto mine. A new emotion rippled across his face; he looked just as he had before he’d thrown the candle at me in my cell—silent and seething. In that horrible instant, I realized what he was planning to do.

  “Don’t!” I screamed, but it was already too late: Robert had thro
wn the lantern at the piles of kindling lining the wall behind my father. It shattered with a tinkling of glass, followed a heartbeat later by the whoosh of a fire flaring to life.

  Thirty-Two

  FLAMES RACED ALONG THE WOODPILES. EVEN AS I dashed toward my father, the entire back wall was vanishing behind a sheet of glowing red. He was crawling on his hands and knees, shouting my name, sounding panicked.

  I reached him at the same instant Antonio did. Together we hooked our arms under his armpits and hauled him to his feet. Around us the bakehouse was turning to flame, its grease- and soot-caked walls disappearing into red waves. Smoke had transformed the air into a thick black mist. Another few moments and we might not be able to find the door.

  With the crackling of flames filling our ears, we half dragged, half carried my father across the room. A few feet from the door, Thomasine cradled Lady Katherine’s body in her lap, sobbing.

  “We have to get out of here!” I shouted. Thomasine shook her head, tightening her arms around Lady Katherine’s shoulders. “She’s gone,” I said, more gently. “We can’t help her anymore. All we can do is save ourselves.”

  Tears shone in Thomasine’s eyes. Nodding hard, she eased Lady Katherine from her lap and rested her lifeless form on the ground. Then she scrambled to her feet and pushed the door open. The fire roared forward, eager to race through the doorway.

  We dashed into the yard. Except for the stacks of kindling, it was empty. There was no sign of Robert.

  I clutched blindly at Antonio’s arm. “Robert escaped! I wasn’t paying attention—all I could think of was helping my father!”

  “It’s too late to worry about Robert.” Antonio thrust my father at me, then slammed the bakehouse door shut. “Get into the street. Raise the alarm.”

  Wind whipped my hair over my face, so I saw him through a brown screen. “But . . . aren’t you coming with us?”

  “There are people in there.” He nodded at the wooden house on the other side of the yard. “They will be burned to death in their beds if I don’t wake them.”

  “I’m coming with you.” I guided my father between the piles of kindling, the two of us moving so fast it felt as though we were flying across the grass. Thomasine hurried ahead of us, flinging open the house door and darting inside.

  “Go!” Antonio called out to me. “You must get far away from here.”

  Heat licked up my back, so intense it felt as though my bones were fusing together. I risked a glance back. The bakehouse had disappeared completely behind a wall of wavering flames. Lady Katherine’s and Sir Gauden’s bodies must already have been consumed. Most of the yard behind us was red with fire.

  We kept running, my father stumbling on the uneven ground and nearly pitching forward onto his face. I yanked him up. We continued in an awkward jog that didn’t feel nearly fast enough. Father’s arm was heavy on my shoulders, and he panted from exertion. We half fell into the house. Antonio shoved the door closed behind us. With my arm still wrapped around my father, I led him down a narrow passageway, following the gleam of Thomasine’s fair hair. Smoke curled along the ceiling and closed off my throat. The walls and floors were disappearing before my eyes, replaced by roiling black smoke. I whipped out my free arm, frantic to touch something that would tell me where we were.

  My hand hit emptiness. No wall. Perhaps we had reached a room. Father and I staggered on, Antonio’s hand resting on the small of my back, urging me forward. Together we stumbled into a room that must have been the kitchen—I thought I saw the outline of a long table and the dark hole of a hearth. The walls were already aflame. Including the far wall, which we needed to pass through to reach the lane. We were trapped.

  Father erupted into a coughing fit. He hunched over, bracing his hands on his knees, his body shaking from coughing. “Leave me, daughter,” he sputtered. “I’m an old man, I have lived long enough.”

  “I’m not leaving you.” Again I scanned the room, fighting the hopelessness cresting within me. The walls were collapsing in flames. The bricks beneath my feet were so hot I feared my shoes would start smoking.

  “There!” Thomasine pointed. Flames had leaped across an empty space in the opposite wall, leaving behind a black rectangle. A staircase. “We can jump out a second-story window!”

  There was no time to think. Antonio and I nodded, and she raced ahead of us. He and I grabbed my father’s arms and followed on her heels. The stairwell was too narrow for the three of us to navigate together, so Antonio flung my father over his shoulder like a sack of grain and began climbing. His legs shook from the effort.

  Up and up we went until we reached a corridor filled with smoke. Three filmy white shapes hurtled toward us—as they neared, they sharpened into two middle-aged men and a girl my age, all dressed in long nightgowns and nightcaps. The girl’s face was badly burned, her cheeks scored bright red.

  “Who the devil are you?” one of the men shouted. He was thickset, and his nightcap had slipped to reveal his shaven skull. This must be the baker, Mr. Farriner. He glanced at my father, his mouth dropping open in surprise. “Mr. Milton! How did you get out of the bakehouse?”

  “We were passing by and saw fire,” I yelled, ignoring the question directed at my father. “The ground floor is an inferno. Is there any other way out of here?”

  Farriner nodded, gesturing for us to follow him. We took to the stairs again, Antonio still carrying my father and now bringing up the rear. His ragged breathing mingled with the crackling flames, creating such a wall of sound I could hear nothing else. The steps narrowed as they curled around and around; we must be nearing the garret. The walls had grown hot to the touch, and I kept my arms at my sides. Every breath I inhaled burned my chest. Tears poured out of my eyes so thickly that the door at the top of the stairs wavered in and out of focus.

  Farriner opened the door. We stumbled in after him. Once Antonio and my father had come inside, Farriner slammed the door shut. In here the smoke had grown so heavy I couldn’t see my own hands as they stretched in front of me, seeking the rippling sensation of glass under my fingers; glass in a window we could break and escape through—

  Someone seized my hands and dragged me to the floor. Antonio. The whites of his eyes were shockingly bright in his face; the rest of his skin was black with soot, making him almost unrecognizable.

  “Stay low, where the smoke is lightest!” he shouted.

  He began worming his way across the floor on his belly, keeping one hand clamped on my father’s wrist so he knew to follow him. They crawled side by side, vanishing from my sight into the smoke. He was saving my father. He hadn’t abandoned him, even though it would have been easier.

  Blinking to keep the tears at bay, I slithered after them. Through my dress I could feel the bare wooden floorboards buckling with heat. Beneath the roar of the flames, I heard the wrenching sound of a casement being forced open. My fingertips brushed the back of someone’s shoe; I recognized the battered leather of Antonio’s boot. He was standing. I scrambled up.

  Next to us, Farriner jerked a window back and forth in its frame until the wood gave way. The window fell, sliding across the tiled roof to break on the pavement below.

  Farriner wriggled through the opening. For an instant he sat hunched on the sill; then he crawled onto the roof, a ghostly figure wavering behind plumes of smoke. He braced his foot against the roof’s gutter, twisting around and reaching out to the burned girl, who stood at the window. “Hannah! Come!”

  She climbed on the sill, then hesitated, her form washed black by smoke. Finally she took Farriner’s hand and scrambled across the roof after him.

  The other man, a servant by the look of his much-mended nightgown, slowly climbed out after them. It took all of my strength not to push him out of the way and clamber out myself. I looked at the garret door. Flames curled over its edges. It couldn’t be long before they spread to the walls.

  A skinny, gray-haired woman appeared—the maidservant who must live in the garret, I guesse
d. She moved toward the window, then stopped, shaking her head.

  “I can’t!” she cried. “It’s too high!”

  “Go!” Antonio yelled. I gripped Father’s hand. It was almost our turn through the window—just another moment more . . .

  The servant backed away from the window, her face frozen in terror. Giving up, Antonio nudged Thomasine toward the window, then nodded at me, his meaning obvious: I would be next.

  I had to shout in Father’s ear to be heard above the flames: “I’ll climb out of the window first. Then Antonio will guide you through. We’ll have to crawl across the roof to reach the house next door. I will guide you the entire way. You must trust me, do you understand?”

  He nodded. His face was tight with concentration, his head cocked; he must have been listening to the flames, trying to judge how far away they were from us.

  Thomasine scrambled through the opening, pausing in a crouch on the sill as the others had, searching for a secure roof tile to hold on to. Then she climbed onto the roof and vanished from sight.

  My turn. Antonio gestured me forward, and I released Father’s hand. I clambered onto the sill, peering out to see the others crawling like beetles across the slanted roof. They were heading toward the garret of the next house. It hadn’t caught fire yet and stood like a black sentinel. Below, the lane looked far away, a distance of at least forty feet. It was empty. The fire alarm mustn’t have started, for I didn’t hear church bells ringing.

  All this I took in at a glance. My hands felt the roof tiles. One of them didn’t shift under my touch. I clung to it as I leaned forward, preparing to slither onto the roof.

  I slid off the sill. On my hands and knees, I crawled a few feet. The rough tiles dug into my palms, but I was glad for their uneven surface; if they had been smooth, I might have skidded right off the roof into certain death. I braced myself on my knees, then looked back at the window. Through the opening, I could barely see Antonio and Father, their forms half hidden by swirling smoke. I reached toward them.