Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘You’ve taken her there, haven’t you, my love? Guided her back, away from all the evil of this day. She’s there waiting for me now, there’s still time, we have nothing to carry, just ourselves, down to the Porta Romana, out, they won’t have gone far. Jean, Haakon, Beck, Anne …’

  Anne would be angry with him. The bandage she’d so carefully wound around his hand, over the stump of his two fingers, had unravelled, was trailing now as he ran. He could see the shattered flesh beneath a final layer of cloth.

  ‘They’ve chopped more bits off me, Maria. They’ll be nothing left soon. What life will there be for a one-handed, three-fingered man on a farm?’

  The farm! Jean had written in his note that they would try to return there, to start again in the place all of them had known their only true happiness. There, he had invented all sorts of devices to aid in the pressing of olive and grape. Surely, he could invent something that could be worked with a thumb and two fingers. His daughter would help him. She always liked to help him in his work.

  ‘If she is there, wife. If she is waiting for me just around the next corner, like any sensible girl would.’

  She wasn’t. Armed men stood in front of his doorway, and he ran into one of them, into hard breastplate sheathed in black cloak, the pace of his run knocking the unprepared soldier back into a comrade.

  ‘Heh, you stupid …’

  The voice was rough, the dialect Roman. The Fugger, knowing his late enemies instantly, adopted the accent of the Sienese, along with a servile attitude.

  ‘Sorry, Master, sorry. A thousand apologies.’ He was backing away slowly the way he had come, glancing past the soldiers into his lodgings, hoping for a glimpse of his daughter, hoping she was not there in this new danger. So focused was he on this hope, he did not see the one guard nudge his fellow and point at the Fugger’s puckered stump. The men lunged for him, holding him beyond hope of escape, before running him through the doorway.

  Inside it was dark, except for bars of light which dropped through the broken roof, showing the meagre furniture and the two men, one sitting on the table’s edge, the other standing, his hooded face in a shadow, turning Jean’s note over and over in a sunbeam. This hood raised toward the Fugger, who was thrust onto his knees, his face in a patch of sunshine, dazzled, blinking up. Strangely, his first thought was of roofing materials.

  ‘Ah! The Lord continues to smile upon us.’

  That voice! The Fugger knew it, yet could not place it at first, the calmness of it, within that calm an energy barely contained. Then the face moved forward into the light.

  ‘Gianni!’

  Along with his gasp, the Fugger’s mind filled with contrary images, flashes of memory. The quick boy who soaked up all the Latin and Greek the Fugger could teach him. The sad boy who came back from the mountains. The cruel boy whose tricks drove his Maria to frequent tears. The angry boy who’d stolen away into the night. The boy in the man’s face that looked down at him now.

  ‘But … how … why are you … what are you …?’

  A simple question cut off the stuttering. ‘Do you know where your daughter is, Fugger?’

  The tension held within the voice wrapped around his fear, doubling its intensity.

  ‘My daughter. My Maria. I …’

  ‘Because I do. I know where she is, I know where she is going and I know what is going to happen to her there. All the terrible things that will happen to her there.’ The words were said so calmly, as if they were of no matter at all and the Fugger felt his heart like a creature, flapping at the bars of his chest. ‘Unless …’

  A hand went into the cloak, emerged with a glitter that dangled at the end of a chain. It swung back and forth there, a pendulum of light, trapping the Fugger’s eyes.

  ‘Unless, Gianni?’

  ‘Unless you do exactly what I ask of you. Exactly. And if you do, I will give you this. This will free her. Save her.’ The locket stilled, spinning slowly now in its one position. The clasp had opened and the Fugger could see inside, to the two tiny portraits there, his wife, himself, his wife, himself, revolving before him, blending, until it was his daughter spinning there, the melding of these two halves.

  He raised his trembling half-hand toward the locket, which withdrew at the approach, dangled and spun just beyond the outreached fingers.

  ‘Not yet. First you have to do what I ask of you. Don’t you want to know what that is?’

  It could be anything and the Fugger knew he would do it. Any crime he was asked to commit, any sin, to have this locket in his hands. To fulfil the promise in those words. To free. To save.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, Gianni, tell me what I must do.’

  And Gianni told him and the glitter disappeared from his sight, swallowed by the black pit of his horror, the black pit just like the one where he had lived, if life it could be called, in a midden beneath a gibbet cage at a crossroads in the Loire. He had been delivered from that pit by Jean Rombaud, a man whose cause he had followed and later betrayed, who had nonetheless raised him up a second time, given him again his friendship, another chance, the joy in the day’s light he had had in all the years since. He owed the man everything. And that man’s son was now urging him to a second betrayal, a worse betrayal than before, to destroy a man’s life work even near its end. And the tears that now forced their way from the Fugger’s eyes, as his wife, and his own and his daughter’s image revolved before them, were tears of a bitter certainty. She was all the joy he had left, all that remained of the only woman he had ever loved. What were friendship, loyalty and a dead queen’s bones, compared to that?

  He fell onto the floor, a shadow passing before his eyes, as if some black bird had squatted over the hole in the roof and blotted out the sun. His voice had just such a carrion croak.

  ‘Jesus save me.’

  Only one man there said, ‘Amen.’ Hitherto silent, he sat at the table. Gianni Rombaud jerked the chain, catching the locket in his hand, and looked up, triumph in his eyes.

  It was no bird that had shut away the sun. Erik had hidden in the street when he’d found the soldiers there, had watched the Fugger taken into the house. Not knowing if his Maria was within as well, he’d scrambled onto the roof from the adjoining building. As stealthy as any big cat, he’d worked his way around shattered tiles and exposed beams to the largest hole, wedging himself into the chimney breast just beside it. He had not been able to hear, what with the noise of the fallen city all around him, the wailing and drums and bells. But he had seen the Fugger kneeling before the hooded figure, had seen something tiny glitter between them, had caught the upsurge of despair that came from the man he’d known all his life. Then he’d seen him fall down, and he’d moved across the hole as the man who had just been the crown of a hood before, now looked up. Erik had frozen, both because movement would betray him and because he recognized another face he had known all his life. The boy he’d grown up with, the boy he’d learned to loathe, was below him, and no longer a boy. And he did not need the Fugger’s despair to tell him that if Gianni Rombaud was involved, something bad had just begun.

  FIVE

  ROYAL PRISONER

  Elizabeth had never been in this part of the palace, not when she’d visited her father in the easy days of childhood, not now when her movements were restricted to the west suite and its little walled garden on the river. If she had more liberty she would not have come here anyway, for you had to walk through the kitchens, where scullions stopped their business to point and mutter, then on through a disused stable yard, her escort’s one torch failing to disperse the night gloom. Up a narrow stair, through a low doorway. The oak-panelled room itself was comfortable enough, if spare; the door by which she’d entered was seamless within the panels, no handle, no keyhole, though she had heard the key turned in the lock by the silent, hooded man who had led her there. A table stood at its centre, two high-backed chairs behind it, one stool before, a lamp the only light in the windowless space, leaving the corners of
the room to the shadows. Beside the lamp was an inkwell, three quills, a penknife and a sheaf of blank parchment.

  She might never have been there before, but she knew the room at a glance. Rooms of interrogation were always the same. She had been in enough of them to know.

  There was one difference here. She discovered it on her first turn about, on the back wall, behind the interrogators’ chairs. It was a mirror, circular, slightly concave, its age showing in the flaking gold frame. The glass was exquisite though; even in such poor light it revealed her to herself clearly. It was not meant for this room, but for some richer place and she wondered how it had made the journey here to confront her with her own imperfections. Wondered, as she always did with mirrors, at the faces that it must have held and lost before. Faces she would recognize instantly, others she would half-remember. Her father had certainly looked in it, never a man to pass a mirror, and she saw him now reflected in her own strong jaw, in the high forehead and its framing of thick red-gold hair. Her mother was such a faded memory and the few portraits that had survived her failed to do her justice, it was said. However, what little she knew and remembered she saw now, in the sharp cheekbones, the arrow straight nose, mostly in the deep caverns of her eyes. Hers were not the fathomless pools, which, it was said, her mother had used to lure and tantalize, but they were considered as fine in their setting. Those, and her delicate hands, her inheritance from the woman she’d never truly known. She raised one now, held the palm to the side of her face, then the back. Recalling the difference between her hand and her mother’s, she swiftly lowered it. It had looked strange to her anyway, even without the extra finger so-called friends teased her about; bony fingers, not fine, the skin as sallow as her face, both drawn by the long years of watchfulness, of suspicion, of … waiting in rooms like this!

  She did not know who had summoned her to this midnight meeting, her first since they’d brought her from Woodstock the week before, to the Queen’s palace if not her presence. Her sister would still not see her, despite Elizabeth’s entreaties to be seen. She had hoped that the summons to Hampton Court would mean her imprisonment was coming to an end, but even if the chains were looser here, she was still not free of them. Meetings like this could be preliminaries to journeys she did not want to take. Back to the boredom, the petty tyrannies of Sir Henry Bedingfield, at Woodstock. Or back to something far worse, the river journey that had begun from this place a year and a month before, downstream to the Tower.

  No! It would not, could not lead there. They had tried to trip her, catch her in conspiracies and lies before and they had failed. She had survived that black prison, survived the attempts to link her to those who would harm the Queen and overthrow her Church, to Wyatt and the rest. She would survive still, as long as her nerve held, as long as she could outface whoever walked through the door now. It was intolerable that they kept her waiting in this gloomy chamber and they would know her displeasure; if she had inherited her father’s colouring and jaw-line, she had his temper too.

  And the room was hers. Disdaining the stool, she sat on a high-backed chair, focusing her attention on the door before her and the unknown opponent who would walk through it. It was as if her concentration was a summons, because almost instantly she heard the scrape of metal in metal. The door unfolded from the panelling.

  ‘Princess Elizabeth.’

  The tall figure stooped in the entrance, a gesture of a bow with the head.

  Renard! Of course it would be him, could be no one else. Only the Fox does his scavenging at night.

  Elizabeth laid her arms out along the chair’s, relaxed them, aiming her anger forward.

  ‘Ambassador. Do you consider this an appropriate hour for an interview?’

  ‘Alas!’ He turned and pushed the door to, an unseen hand beyond fitting key to lock. ‘My labours suck away my daylight hours. It’s late in the day when can I look to my own pleasure.’

  ‘Pleasure?’

  ‘Oh yes, my lady. For this is more in the nature of a personal visit. To welcome you back to court from your exile. To hope that this is the beginning of happier times for you, as they are happier for the kingdom and all its subjects.’

  Elizabeth bit back the retort that surged within her – that the martyrs who were being burnt by the score for their Protestant faith were hardly happy. But she had spent the better part of two years trying to convince this man, among others, that she was a loyal daughter of the Catholic Church and rejoiced in its glorious restoration. This man had tried everything within his considerable means to have her condemned as a heretic or a traitor and killed as either by flame or axe. She would not give him anything that might help him pursue that cause anew. So she said nothing, gripped the arms of the chair, waited.

  Renard eyed the seating arrangements with amusement and instead of taking the stool, he walked forward and placed a package, wrapped in red velvet, on the table beside the lamp.

  ‘A present, for you, my lady. To welcome you back.’

  Elizabeth made no move toward the object. ‘What is this kindness, my lord?’

  ‘You will have to open it to see.’

  ‘I would prefer if you opened it for me.’

  Another smile. ‘As my lady wishes.’

  Long fingers untied the loose cord, slipping a small wooden box from out the velvet cover. It was slightly larger than the width, and of the length, of one hand, the depth of two hands joined in prayer. Designs were carved into the walnut – the coat of arms of the Emperor. When Elizabeth still did not move, Renard lifted the lid off, placed it to the side, stood back, clasping his hands before him.

  Lamplight glowed on a chess set, tiny figures exquisitely carved, ivory white facing ebony black. Bending forward, Elizabeth lifted a knight past its initial resistance, to reveal the little peg that had held it.

  ‘It is beautiful.’

  ‘The craftsmen of Modena have excelled themselves indeed. You do play?’

  ‘I am a novice in the art, but yes, I play.’

  ‘I believe my lady is being modest. I hear you surpass your tutors in this as you do in most of your studies.’

  ‘And I have heard you are unmatched in Europe.’

  There was no denial, merely an incline of the head, another slight smile. ‘Would you play with me?’

  ‘Is it not a little late for games?’

  ‘It is never too late for games. Or for chess. Indulge me.’

  The Princess glanced away from those sharp dark eyes, back to the board. The pieces waited, but not in their opening ranks.

  ‘But this game is already advanced.’

  ‘I have taken the liberty.’ Renard’s voice was gentle. ‘Between skilled players, the opening stages of any game are so predictable. We have played them often, you and I. It’s the endgame that intrigues, do you not think? You may choose either colour.’

  ‘I do not like my moves being made for me.’

  ‘But there are certain moves you are powerless to make otherwise.’

  Elizabeth allowed a smile to come. ‘Are we still talking about chess, my lord?’

  There was a shrug, a hint of hardness now in the voice. ‘Choose – white or black?’

  The game was seven moves in and white had already seized the middle ground. Black was in a good defensive position though and, despite a sudden urge to carry the attack to the enemy, Elizabeth knew that her survival depended, as always, on caution. Especially against an opponent such as Renard.

  ‘I will play black.’

  ‘A wise choice. You have the next move. My last was there, my knight to the centre.’ Renard moved away from the table. ‘You will not mind if I do not sit. Hard stools do not agree with me.’

  Resisting the impulse to give up her own, leather-cushioned chair – she had gained that position and would not surrender it – Elizabeth concentrated on the board. Her own knight was under threat. Should she move up her queen or bishop? As she studied, she was aware of Renard drifting up to the mirror, aware of his ref
lected eyes upon her. She rolled her shoulders, planned her move, awaited his. It came.

  ‘Have you seen Her Majesty, your sister yet?’

  ‘I am sure you know I have not. My entreaties to be allowed into her presence have been denied. So far.’

  ‘Ah yes. Sad that sisters should be so sundered. Especially at this time.’

  ‘This time?’

  He had turned to her now. ‘To succour her in her pregnancy. You know she is not far from her term.’

  Elizabeth kept her voice even. ‘I had heard, my lord, and I rejoice in it.’

  ‘You … rejoice?’

  ‘Of course, my lord. I know how my sister longs for a child.’

  ‘“Rejoice” – a curious word.’ Renard had moved, was still behind her but to the other side. ‘You rejoice at a birth that will deprive you of the crown? That will guarantee the Catholic succession you deplore? Wouldn’t you rather rejoice if the Queen was to die in childbirth and the Spanish brat with her?’

  It was a sudden attack and she swivelled in her chair to meet it. ‘I desire no such thing. And you are a brute and a slanderer to suggest I do. The Queen will hear of this.’

  Instead of meeting her anger with anger, Renard laughed, a sound devoid of any humour.

  ‘Come, Elizabeth. The Queen will hear nothing of you, save what is ill. Last week she called you, when I and others stood by … let me see, oh yes, it was a bastard, a heretic and a hypocrite. And she prayed again for the fruit of her womb to deliver the country from you.’

  Elizabeth rose slowly, the anger tight in her chest. ‘It is by listening to men like you that my loving sister has been poisoned against me. Yet she is the Queen and may call me what she likes, however false those titles may be. You, Ambassador, may not call me anything but “Your grace” or “My lady”. And I will not stay to be so abused.’

  She moved to the door, waited there, her back a barrier to the man who began now to applaud.

  ‘I had heard that you delight in masques and revels. I did not know you had absorbed so much of the player’s skill.’ Receiving no reply, no turn of her body he went on. ‘Come, my lady. Shall we stop this game?’