Curiosity sparked in the boy’s grave eyes. He crossed the room slowly, still on guard. He stood before Adam, looking up at him, his eyes darting from one of his father’s bent arms to the other. He pointed to the right arm. Adam brought his right hand around and opened it. Nothing in his palm.
Disappointment flicked over Robert’s face. He pointed to the other arm, determined to know.
Adam brought around his left hand and opened it. Nothing. Both children looked confused and let down. Adam reached for the side of his son’s head, and with the flourish of a magician displayed the prize he had apparently snatched from behind Robert’s ear. A bright silver coin, a Spanish piece of eight. The boy’s eyes widened in astonishment. Kate laughed at the trick and clapped her hands. “You’re rich, Robin!”
Adam grinned. “Why a fast ship, you ask? That’s why.”
Robert regarded the coin, his interest waning. “Just money.”
Just? Adam blinked at him. Where was the boy’s delight?
His son looked up, wariness in his eyes. “Did you steal it?”
Adam was shaken. And angry. He said sternly, “You’ll speak with respect to your father.”
The boy flinched. He piped in a small voice, “Yes, sir.”
It made Adam feel a tyrant. Did his son think he was going to have him lashed? Regret surged through him. He hated being put so off balance. “Well,” he said, briskly rolling up the drawing to get his bearings, “we’ll talk later. Off with you two, now. Master Rowan has set lessons for you, I warrant.”
They went upstairs to their tutor and Adam set out across the courtyard, maneuvering past workmen’s carts and apprentices hoisting shovels and picks, barrels and ladders. Kilburn Manor was a hive, the activity centered on the new wing, which stood parallel to the old manor house, the two connected by a new roofed passageway so that together with the waterfront gates, the buildings formed a square around the courtyard. Beyond them lay drowsing orchards and gardens. Beyond that, farmer’s fields.
Adam strode through the shadows of Frances’s topiary works that were a feature of the courtyard, two lines of tall yew shrubbery clipped into shapes of columns, pyramids, vases, and globes that her gardeners maintained as stiff as statues. The light west wind barely ruffled their leaves. It did, though, carry a scent of watery plant life from the River Westbourne as it made its way down from Hampstead to the Thames, which fronted the old manor. Adam had never warmed to being in Chelsea; it made his trip upriver from the Thames estuary longer than when they’d lived in London. But seven years ago Frances had set her mind on moving to this sleepy spot. Said she wanted to bring up the children far from the noisome city. Adam knew what she’d really meant: far from court.
Into the new wing he went and up the stairs and into the long gallery, dodging workmen and tramping over sawdust that floured the floor. The air was dry with plaster dust. The hammering never stopped. The place was cavernous. Canvas sheets were tacked up to cover the long, empty expanse of wall where, at one end, glaziers were fitting new windows that soared two stories high. The canvas hung limp in the still afternoon, like sails becalmed. Adam shook his head at the folly of the project. Above this gallery were two more ostentatious floors. Frances was building a palace.
She stood at the far end, gesturing to a burly stonecutter in a scarred leather apron who listened intently to her instructions. The fellow knows who’s captain, Adam thought wryly. He had never discounted his wife’s skills as a manager. She took pleasure in running a large household, and was good at it.
She noticed him coming her way and hurried to greet him. “My lord and master,” she said gaily, making a mock curtsy. “Come.” She beckoned him with happy urgency. “I must have your word on a matter of vital importance.”
She hooked her arm around his and led him down the length of the gallery, chattering about the marbled pattern underfoot beneath the sawdust, the columns the masons were installing by the stairs, the gilt plasterwork for the ceiling, the cherrywood linen-fold paneling she had ordered. The gleam in her eyes told him how much she was enjoying the project. He was sorry to have to frustrate her.
“There.” She stopped him and pointed at the far wall. “Should the portrait go above the door, or nearer the windows? Above the door would catch the viewer’s eye best, but that spot won’t get the splendid light from the windows, so I can’t decide. What do you think?”
Adam looked at her. “Portrait?”
“Of us. I’ve commissioned Hans Eworth. Lady Fanshaw says he did an excellent job on her.” She added with hushed reverence, “He painted the late Queen Mary, you know.”
And charges a princely sum, Adam thought. “Frances, that’s impossible.”
“No, don’t worry, he has worked us into his schedule,” she said reassuringly. “It’s all arranged. He starts next week. It takes a month or so, and he’ll stay with us.” She added happily, patting his arm, “It will let you rest and get back your strength. You’ll have nothing to do but sit for Master Eworth.”
Sit for a month? What a god-awful thought. “Cancel the arrangement. There will be no portrait.”
“Cancel it? But why?”
“I can’t afford it.” He had raised his voice in exasperation, but thankfully the workmen hadn’t heard him above the din they were making. Saws kept sawing, hammers kept banging. Adam suddenly saw them as leeches on his life. “And cancel all of this.” He swept his arm to take in the whole huge wing.
Frances was staring at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. He remembered how his son had looked at him like a stranger. Neither of them saw him. “You heard me,” he said. “Send these people home. Today.” He turned to go.
She caught his arm. Her voice was a tight whisper. “You cannot. Your reputation will be ruined.”
“I’m already ruined. Frances, there is no money.” A plasterer’s apprentice glanced up from stirring paste. Adam looked away, irritation biting him. And something sharper—a gnawing sense of failure. He said to Frances, forcing himself to speak more gently, “I told you, it all went down with the Jesus. I’m sorry.” He noticed two more workmen looking at him. It was humiliating. “No more of this in public,” he said to his wife, and headed for the stairs. He felt he couldn’t get out fast enough.
Frances caught up with him as he walked away from the wing. “But . . . there’s the income from your lands. The rents. The revenues.”
He kept walking. “And most of it will go to cover what I owe Porteous.”
“Well then, there’s your father. He has—”
“No.” He would not ask his father to pay for his wife’s folly. Hot bitterness surged through him. He’d had all the money they needed and more! He had sailed off on a great venture and made a great profit, but the Spaniards had sent it to the bottom of the sea.
“Adam, stop. Please!”
He halted, hearing her distress. She was out of breath. They were in her topiary row, and the foliage shadows cast an unforgiving mottle over her distraught face. Adam heaved a tight sigh. He wanted no more wrangling. “I’m sorry. I know you want this grand place. But it’s impossible.”
“Me?” She looked hurt. Redness sprang to her eyes. “I haven’t built this for me. It’s for you. A haven from the dangers of the sea. A shelter. A sanctuary.”
A mausoleum, he thought. He couldn’t stifle a shudder. Dear God, give me an ocean.
She saw it, and stiffened. “For you, yes. And for the children. Even if all my efforts mean nothing to you, think of your children. They must have a legacy.”
“A legacy of debt?” He looked at her, baffled. Was she willfully blind to the facts? It irked him, too, the way she wielded the mention of the children like a weapon. He remembered his son’s probing look of suspicion. “The boy called me a thief. How did he get that notion?”
“Robert? I don’t know. I had to tell him why you didn’t come home, since he knew you’d landed. I told him of the Spanish count insulting you and how, to clear it up, they kept you at
the palace.”
“That’s how you put it to him? That I was kept there?”
“Isn’t that what Her Majesty did? Keep you?”
The double meaning was too clear. Adam’s anger boiled, but he held his tongue. He would not take her taunt. “That’s no way to talk to the boy. You should have explained I was reporting to the Queen about my trading mission. A mission to enhance the power of England and the glory of Her Majesty.”
“Not to provide for your family?”
“My family prospers only when Her Majesty’s interests prosper. Why can you not see that they are one and the same?”
“Yet you do not. You esteem her above us.”
“Good God, she is our queen.”
“And nothing more? To you? Can you swear that?”
He was fed up. “You talk rot.” He turned and strode on.
She shouted after him, “I say no more than what half of London is saying. How she entertained you alone on her barge. How she took your part after you attacked the count. How even when the man died and the Spaniards called for justice, she gave you her protection.”
He turned, appalled at the loudness of her voice. No one was near, but anyone could be beyond the yew trees. He went back to her. “Frances, whose side are you on? I roughed up a Spaniard and I regret his death. But he is just one man. We English lost over three hundred!”
“She kept you in her private rooms! Like some male whore!”
He raised his hand in fury. Then froze, rocked by how near he had come to striking her.
She was trembling. “It’s revolting,” she croaked. “The show between the two of you. You love her! Do not deny it.”
“You are mad.”
“Swear it, then. Swear that she is no more to you than your queen. Swear it on the souls of your children.”
He seethed in silence.
“You see?” she cried. Red anger splotched her face. Tears brimmed in her reddened eyes. “You make our marriage a mockery!”
His anger suddenly drained. He could not even muster that much passion. All he felt was dull, cold revulsion. This moment had been long coming. “Our marriage was a mockery from the moment we said our vows. No, before. From the moment you threatened my father’s wife.”
“Lady Thornleigh has done very well for herself, so do not blame—”
“You would have informed on her. Marry me, you said, or see her burned at the stake. That was your ultimatum. Till death do us part. Well, I’ve kept my end of the God-cursed bargain. So keep yours, madam, and spare me your prattle about love.”
She was weeping now. Uncontrolled, racking sobs. Adam turned and walked away.
“Where are you going?” she shouted.
“The Elizabeth,” he shouted back, no longer caring who heard.
Her voice was a wail behind him. “She robbed me of my husband!”
I was never yours to lose.
Portsmouth harbor lay rosy under a blood-red sunset. The water, calm as dimpled glass, radiated pink tints back to the sky. The tightness in Adam’s chest eased as he walked up the gangplank, taking in the familiar shipboard smells and sounds: the air’s salty tang, the haylike smell of the canvas, the water lapping gently at the hull, the rhythmic creak of rope against wood. His anxiety drifted away. A ship beneath him soothed him the way a tankard of ale before a hearth soothed other men. He was home.
Some work had been done to clean up the Elizabeth when she’d been brought here to Portsmouth, but there was still much to do. He felt bad about how he had galloped off to London and left his ship with her topsides filthy, mainmast a giant jagged stub, spars splintered, canvas in tatters, lower decks reeking of sickness. He had ordered a cleanup and basic repairs, and these had been done, and now the ship dozed at rest like the patched-up veteran she was, wounds bandaged, body bathed, but still a long way from fighting form. Ah, but what a campaigner she had proved, baring her teeth against the Spaniards in the skirmish! And how faithfully she had brought them home, the handful who’d survived, though she had been limping from her own injuries. She had slogged on as a veteran carries a wounded comrade off the battlefield. Adam crossed her bare, beaten deck and went down the worn companionway stairs. He felt he owed his ship more.
How much would it cost to refit her? he wondered as he opened the door of the stern cabin. He unbuckled his sword and hung it on the bulkhead hook, then flopped down on his berth on his back with a weary, grateful thud. Rose-tinted light from the stern window warmed the dark wood paneling that cocooned him. With the slow gentle rocking of the hull, the ropes that were the sinews of the vessel carried on their whispering creaks. His compass on the table clinked softly against a pewter plate. His eyes drifted closed. Refit her? As impossible as Frances’s foolish palace. Bitterness was a worm in his heart. He didn’t have enough money even to replace the bowsprit.
“Had enough of home life?”
Adam’s eyes sprang open. Anthony Porteous sat on the edge of the table. With arms folded over his broad chest, his bald head agleam in the rosy light, and a satisfied aura of omnipotence, he put Adam in mind of a genie from a fable. But a genie, he suspected, who wanted to be paid.
“Couldn’t stay home,” he replied. “There’s work to be done.” He sat up and threw his legs over the side of the berth to show he meant business.
“Tonight?” Porteous smiled like a man at cards calling a bluff.
“A candle will do.”
“For what task?”
“My log, for one. Accounts, for another.”
“Accounts? What, will your pen conjure profit from disaster?”
Adam slumped. “No.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Look, if you’re here about what I owe you—”
“I am.”
“Porteous, you know I have nothing. Once I get the ship refitted I’ll do whatever it takes to pay you back. I’ll slog to Flanders with tin and hides and slog back with pots and boots. It will take a few years, but I swear you’ll get your money back.”
“Years? No, no, my friend, that will not do.” He toyed with the compass. “I want it all repaid by Michaelmas.”
Adam stared at him. Next month? The demand was insane. Unnerved, he tried to make a jest of it. “Then tell me where I can conjure a chest full of gold.”
“I shall. It’s scheduled to leave Seville, bound for Flanders. I’ll give you a ship to intercept it.”
A shiver scurried up Adam’s back. Piracy? He remembered his son’s words, “Did you steal it?” The thought revolted him. He glared at Porteous. “I’m no thief.”
“You haven’t heard whose gold it is.”
“A rich Castilian merchant’s? A fat Dutch burgher’s? I’m not interested, I tell you. I am no pirate.”
“No, you are a man who’s been wronged. By Spain. A man who wants revenge. On Spain.” He set down the compass and spoke in earnest. “The ship I speak of sails for Philip of Spain.”
Adam’s breath caught. “What?”
“That’s right, the king himself. Next week that ship will be bound for the Spanish-occupied Netherlands. It will carry a hoard of gold destined to hire more troops in Philip’s murderous oppression of the Dutch. This is your chance, Thornleigh. The King’s gold will not bring back your men, but it will give us back what the Spaniards stole from us in the Indies.” Porteous crossed his arms with a satisfied smile. “Interested now?”
Adam made no effort to hide it. Excitement coursed through him as sharp as hunger. He wanted this! It was a huge risk. He would be going alone against Spanish guns. And there was Elizabeth. Would she stand by him again or have him arrested? This raid, he saw, would either make him very rich or get him hanged. He stood up with fresh vigor. Either way, he was going send a pack of Spaniards to the bottom of the Channel.
13
The Casket Letters
Early to work as always, Will strode down a crowded corridor of the Council of the North in York on his way to the chamber where the inquiry about Mary, Queen of Scots, in its
third day, was about to resume. He had been here from the start acting as Sir William Cecil’s representative, a position that put him in daily company with Elizabeth’s three commissioners hearing the arguments, and he didn’t intend to miss a word.
“Master Croft, beg your pardon, sir,” a young page said as he caught up to him. “You asked me to tell you when Lord Thornleigh arrived.”
“He’s here?”
“Yes, sir.” The boy pointed past the milling crowd. “North entrance, sir.”
Will turned on his heel and set out in the direction he’d just come from. This day had already begun well with a letter from Sir William praising his diligence and entrusting him with more responsibility in liaising with the commissioners. Now Uncle Richard’s arrival made it even better. He had come as Elizabeth’s personal envoy to the proceedings, a hugely prestigious position, and Will was not above basking in his uncle’s glory.
And he in mine just a little, he thought with a tickle of pride. After all, the inquiry had been Will’s idea. Now in full swing, it was making history and Will was making a name for himself. That promised quicker advancement through Sir William at court, and that meant he would soon be in a position to marry Justine. He had got her note that she had been sent to attend Mary and he’d decided that as soon as they were both back in London they would wed. He was grinning as he reached his uncle.
His lordship was shrugging off his cape to a footman, and Will greeted him with a respectful but cheerful bow. “My lord, welcome. Will you take some refreshment after your journey? I’ll alert the commissioners that you’re here.”
His uncle’s look was almost a scowl. “I’m fine. Let’s get to work.”
Will took no offense. The journey from London was wearying, and his uncle was not a young man. In the saddle for weeks, no wonder he was testy.
They moved through the crowd of men who parted, murmuring and watching Lord Thornleigh as he passed. There were clusters of the Scottish delegation, huddles of English lawyers, knots of York aldermen, and Will knew they were all hungry for clues from his uncle about Elizabeth’s position in the matter of Mary.
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