by Jessica Dall
“Yes, yes. What is all the racket?” he asked, his tone much more indignant than Cecília would have been able to manage with her heart still in her throat.
“Please step aside,” a man’s voice instructed.
“I beg your pardon?” Tio Aloisio asked even as a pair of guards shouldered past him. “What is the meaning of this?”
The guards sent a suspicious look at Cecília before the one who had previously spoken directed the other toward the bedrooms. He turned back to Tio Aloisio. “Your niece and another man were seen in the company of a wanted criminal tonight.”
“A criminal?” Surprise let Cecília’s mouth move.
The guard held a paper out for Tio Aloisio to take.
Her uncle held the candle closer, reading quickly before he looked at Cecília. “Your brother has been officially exiled. He is a criminal if he’s inside the country.”
Cecília pressed her lips together, not certain how the first minister had convinced the king to issue that decree when Francisco hadn’t actually done anything save return from what was supposedly a religious mission, but she supposed it didn’t matter. She faced the guard. “There’s no one here.”
“Do you deny you were outside the church tonight?”
Cecília hesitated, her first instinct to deny it, but if she had already been spotted, that would have done her no good.
“There were two men?” Tio Aloisio broke in before she could think of something safe to say. Cecília snapped her eyes to him.
“So was reported,” the guard said.
Tio Aloisio gave her an exasperated look that said he’d correctly guessed exactly who had helped, but he addressed the guard. “Come with me.”
Cecília took a step forward. “Tio—”
“Stay,” he snapped, as though she were a disobedient hound. “You have done quite enough tonight.”
She still tried to object.
He spoke over her, back to the guards. “If you are looking for Father Durante, you can come with me.”
The guard sent Tio Aloisio a suspicious look.
The second guard reappeared. “Nothing.”
The first continued to glare for a moment before he gave a short nod and motioned for Tio Aloisio to lead.
Not bothering to ask to dress, Tio Aloisio turned for the door.
“Tio—” Cecília tried desperately to grab his arm.
He shook her off with enough force to make her stumble back. “This is for both of us,” he said in a low hiss.
As the three men swept out into the hall, Cecília caught her balance and rushed forward. The shut door wouldn’t budge. He’d barred her in. She pulled at the handle all the same. Though the wood rattled, it stayed shut. She hit it in frustration. She could go out the window to follow, but by the time she wrapped around the outside of the palace, the guards would already be to the diplomatic corps’ hallway. John would no doubt do his best to delay them, but he would have to save himself as well. She could only hope he was right that his job was more at risk than his life. Her mind spinning too quickly to come up with a plan that wasn’t simply walking herself into a noose, she placed her back against the door and slid to the ground.
Dear Lord, what do I do now?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cecília paced the antechamber like a caged animal, waiting. Dawn had certainly broken. The bells had rung for Lauds. She had no idea what Father Moreno had to think or if he already knew what had happened. And still, Tio Aloisio hadn’t returned. She was beginning to wonder if he was purposefully avoiding her. Whatever had happened with the guards and Francisco had to have been long over by then.
Just as she was considering going out through the window, there was a scrape as whatever had been bracing the door pulled away, and Tio Aloisio stepped through.
Cecília spun toward him.
He spoke first. “Don’t you dare try to explain yourself, Cecília Madalena.”
“Explain myself?” Her voice tipped up, dangerously loud in her incredulity. “You’ve killed your nephew.”
“I’ve saved my niece. There was already a price on Francisco’s head. You don’t need one placed on yours.”
“I could have managed things. Gotten him out of the country—”
“How, exactly? By dragging him down to the docks and asking every ruffian you come across if he’ll help? Bates might be infatuated enough to attempt your ill-conceived notions, but I can still tell you when you’re trying to get yourself killed.”
Anger still made Cecília want to snap at him, but the mention of John sidetracked her. “Mr. Bates... Is he...?” She couldn’t think how to end that question.
“Mr. Hays will likely have a headache to deal with, and I imagine Bates will be having a much shorter stay in Lisbon than he was planning, but most likely, he’ll come out the best from this entire fracas. He always has had a way of landing on his feet. You’d do best to worry after yourself.”
She tried to ignore the twist in her stomach. “What about me?”
Tio Aloisio held her eyes. “I convinced the first minister I could be trusted to watch you—and that wasn’t a simple feat, believe me—so you are not to leave these rooms until all of this passes.”
“I’m being held prisoner?”
“If you don’t wish to join your brother in Junqueira, you will remain here.”
The thought of the prison, the awful smell, and the screams made Cecília’s throat close. She fought to get her voice back, but Tio Aloisio had already moved on.
“You know the first minister is not someone who easily forgives, Cilinha, and what good will I have left is wearing thin. I can’t save your brother, but if you just listen to me for once and do as you’re told, we may get through this.”
The sad sincerity on Tio Aloisio’s face made some other emotion flicker through the righteous anger Cecília had been clinging to through the morning, leaving a sickening, unbalanced feeling inside her chest. For all her time living with him—five years of sharing a roof, conspiring together, going through some of the worst times of her life—somehow, she hadn’t fully factored her uncle into her thoughts of family. The equation had always been her, Bibiana, Francisco, the last vestiges of the family she had lost, not the one who had taken her in. A fragment of guilt attempted to take hold. “How long does he want me to stay here? Until he’s killed all the priests on the other side of the palace?”
“That isn’t our business.”
Cecília pressed her lips tightly together, her conscience churning.
Tio Aloisio watched her face closely. “I don’t want to have to bar the exits, but I will.”
“Then there isn’t anything else to discuss, is there?” She crossed her arms, retreating into her anger.
Something sad went through his eyes—hurt or disappointment, Cecília didn’t know—and he shook his head. “Do you at least understand why I’m doing this?”
Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she did. Silently, she gave the barest of nods.
“I suppose that’s something,” Tio Aloisio murmured under his breath, moving deeper into the antechamber toward his desk. With his back to her, he raised his voice to address her again. “You’d best find something to occupy yourself with. You’re in for a long wait one way or the other. It’ll only feel worse with nothing to do.”
Worse. Cecília bit back a scoff, not certain it was possible to feel worse. But with nothing else to do, she turned on her heel and stormed off to her room.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The twitchiness in Cecília’s limbs had grown so bad that she had begun picking at the hair on her arms to keep herself from making a run for the door. Since the start of her imprisonment more than a week before and his promise that he would try to do what he could—whatever that even meant—Tio Aloisio had rarely been around, and no one else had been by to visit. She had to imagine that Senhor Carvalho had forbidden anyone from entering the rooms, same as he had forbidden her from leaving. She might have escaped a c
ell in Junqueira, but there was certainly no denying that she was a prisoner all the same. And she was being punished.
As the sun sank below the horizon once again, Cecília stood from the side of her bed and moved to the window. She pulled the bed dress tighter around her, supposing it didn’t matter that she once again hadn’t gotten properly dressed. She hadn’t even seen Águeda in two days. Heaven knew where the maid had gone. Perhaps that was part of the punishment Senhor Carvalho had devised, keeping even that contact away from Cecília. But then it wasn’t as though Cecília was going anywhere that required court dress, so she hardly required help dressing.
With the sky going from pink-orange to dark blue, she heaved a sigh and turned to light the lamp by her bed. She could have returned to the book she had been reading—if nothing else, Tio Aloisio had been keeping his shelf remarkably well stocked over the week—but sulking seemed like a far more appealing option.
She had just gotten the wick to catch when something tapped on the glass. She spun back toward the window. Squinting to try to see past her own weak reflection in the lamplight, she made out the shadowy shape of a man. The jump in her chest said who it was. She hurried back up to the window and lifted the latch, swinging it as widely as the chain that had been added would allow. “John?”
“You’re a very difficult woman to see at the moment.”
“What are you doing here?”
He started to answer before he glanced over his shoulder as though worried he had been followed, and given the circumstances, that certainly wasn’t out of the question. “May I come in?”
“The window doesn’t open any farther.” She pulled on the frame to demonstrate.
John’s eyes went to the chain before he leaned back to look down the building. “What about that one?” He pointed to his right. “That’s over your uncle’s desk, isn’t it?”
Cecília frowned. “Do you think you’d fit?”
He judged it for a moment before nodding. “I bet I could manage, if you unlatch it.”
Though the outside door was barred, there was nothing stopping her from going into the antechamber. She nodded back. “I’ll meet you there.”
Without another word, he slid down the side of the building, and she hurried out of her room. With as rare as her uncle’s presence had been, there was no reason to believe Tio Aloisio would pick that exact moment to return, but with her luck lately, she wasn’t willing to chance being caught.
Though the rectangular window didn’t look as wide as John’s shoulders were broad, he somehow managed to maneuver his way through, using the desk as a step down to the floor. Cecília opened her mouth to ask another question before she checked the door to the hall and grabbed his hand to lead him into her room. There perhaps wouldn’t be an easy escape if Tio Aloisio returned while John was inside, but he could at least hide there, unlike in the antechamber.
She didn’t speak until the door was safely shut behind them. “Now, what are you doing here?”
“You aren’t pleased to see me?”
“Of course I am.” After a week of near isolation, she nearly would have been glad to see Senhor Carvalho, let alone John. “But you could get into a lot of trouble, being here.”
“They’re already shipping me out in the morning. I’m not sure there’s much else anyone here could do to me.”
The matter-of-fact way he said it somehow made the information worse, settling into Cecília’s stomach like a lead weight. “You came to say goodbye, then?”
He hesitated for a beat. “Only if you don’t wish to come with me.”
Cecília blinked, the words taking a minute to make sense. “Go with you?”
“They haven’t actually told me what’s coming once I reach London—it’s really anyone’s guess if I still have a job or not—so not an ideal situation by any means, but if you and your brother need to get out of the country...”
She shook her head. “Francisco is in prison. Senhor Carvalho isn’t going to let him leave the country. It’s doubtful he would let me, if we asked.”
“So we don’t ask.” John shrugged as though it were the simplest thing in the world. “You have a letter to get into the prison, don’t you? That’s what your brother wanted?”
“You’re suggesting we break Francisco out of Junqueira Prison?”
“Sounds like an adventure to me.”
“Possibly getting killed is an adventure?”
“What do you think sailing is?” He gave one of his lopsided smiles before continuing. “It’s your decision, of course, but I have a ship leaving port come morning. I was hoping to at least take you, if not you and your brother. I imagine you’d prefer that to waiting in here for the first minister to have a good day and agree to release you?”
For the first time in weeks, something like hope moved through her chest. She moved to the drawer with her papers and pulled out the letter Senhor Carvalho had given her two and a half years before. “This is what Francisco wanted.”
John moved up beside her and looked at the paper from over her shoulder. “It looks simple enough. We change the date on it, and I don’t think we’ll have any issue getting in.”
She chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to play out all the possibilities if they actually attempted a rescue. Of course, the guards at Junqueira probably cared less about people trying to break into the prison. “Getting out is likely the more difficult part.”
“Could we forge something for that? We have the first minister’s signature there. We could make some sort of order to move your brother.”
“And any guard would believe the people Senhor Carvalho sent to move him were an Englishman and a girl?” She turned her head to look at John.
He pursed his lips slightly, saying he couldn’t argue the point. “We need to sneak out, then?”
“It’s a prison. I don’t think there are a lot of windows to go out of.”
“Wasn’t it damaged in the quake? Perhaps we could find a fracture or something that hasn’t been fixed yet?”
Cecília opened her mouth to answer before the thought hit her. “I know where the plans are.”
“What?”
“The plans for rebuilding the prison. They would include what parts are still damaged. We could use those to find a way out.”
John’s eyebrows rose as he nodded. “Where are they?”
“If we’re lucky, the architects’ office. If not, Senhor Ventura has them.”
“Who?”
“The man I was speaking to when you first arrived.”
“Ah.” Recognition moved over his expression. “So it shouldn’t be a problem even if he does have them.”
She shook her head at his tone. “You are going to sound jealous, Mr. Bates, if you aren’t careful. And for no good reason. I don’t think he’s going to go out of his way to help me off two conversations weeks ago.”
“I don’t know. You’re very convincing when you wish to be.”
She sent him an unamused look but moved on. “Do you know where the architects’ office is?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever been.”
“And you likely aren’t familiar with architectural plans.”
“They haven’t been my field of study, no.”
With the architects so close to Senhor Carvalho’s office, it certainly wasn’t a safe place for Cecília to go. But if the first minister already knew John was working with her, someone finding him stumbling around trying to find what they needed wouldn’t be any better for her. If they were going to stupidly risk their lives by trying to break Francisco out of prison, she would have to begin by stupidly risking her life by sneaking into the architects’ office.
“Help me dress?” She opened the chest at the foot of her bed to pull out something that was decent for the halls but less cumbersome than full court dress. “You can change the letter while I look for those plans then meet me in the gardens. Where we went last time?”
Though she wasn’t looking at him, she could
hear the frown in his tone. “You don’t want me to come with you?”
“People would likely notice us more moving together.” And you’d still be able to stay out of it if I do get caught before we even leave the palace. She undid the tie to her bed dress and draped it over the chair at her vanity before picking up her stays. “Help me?”
“I’m not sure I make the best lady’s maid.” He moved up behind her all the same.
“Just do the opposite of taking them off.”
“You believe I have a lot of experience with that?”
“You managed fine the first day we met.” She looked at him over her shoulder.
He met her eyes for a moment before he dropped his gaze to the stays and began lacing them. “This likely isn’t the moment to get distracted, unfortunately.”
Cecília felt herself flush more than she imagined she should with their history and looked forward again. “I don’t know where my uncle is, but we shouldn’t linger.”
“And you should pack what you can.” He pulled the laces a little tighter than they needed to be but managed to get the stays up. “I doubt you’ll be able to come back once someone notices you’re missing.”
The reality of what they were attempting hit like a blow to the stomach. Still, she nodded. “Get started with the letter. I can manage the rest of my clothing.” I think. “Then I’ll grab a few things.”
After putting on something that could be called decent, Cecília returned to her chest and pulled out everything she thought she might need that would also be simple enough to carry. Her jewelry, she could easily enough fit in her pockets along with a few other knickknacks she had collected over the years. She would have to live with just the dress on her back, as anything more elaborate would be too cumbersome. But then I won’t need court dress if we aren’t at court.