“The Admiralty.”
“Then send him word there’s sickness here in the house. Tell him to stay where he is until he hears from you that the infection is past. Can you do that?” She still looked glassy-eyed with anxiety. “Frances, if Elizabeth agrees, this will soon be over. But until then you must stay strong. Now go, send the message. And then wait to hear from Elizabeth.”
She closed her eyes as if it was all too much. But she nodded and whispered, “All right.”
Like a sleepwalker fleeing a nightmare, Justine found herself at Kilburn Manor. She hardly knew how she had reached the place. Stumbling out of Will’s house was the last thing she remembered clearly. She must have wandered London’s streets for hours because she was vaguely aware of the sun being high as she sat numbly in the boat heading west. But the decision to come to Chelsea, and the conversation, if it could be called that, with her aunt in the parlor—a conversation in which Justine could scarcely hold a thought or hold herself upright on her trembling legs—was all a fog.
“Your father?” her aunt had said, looking oddly frightened and distant. “He is in the new wing.” She had pointed to the empty building across the courtyard.
Now Justine found herself standing in a space that seemed like a huge cave. A cave on a cliff. That’s how it felt, for she had come up a long flight of marble stairs, and all the way up she had glimpsed sky through gaps in canvas sheets hung over tall, unglazed windows that ran from the ground to the second-story ceiling. Her skirt hem had dragged over thin drifts of snow hiding in the stair corners. The cave was a vast empty chamber off the staircase. It was dark, the windows covered with boards that blotted the sunlight. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom she saw, at the far end, a small coal fire glowing in a grate in a marble fireplace that was taller than her. She walked toward it, her footsteps echoing up to the lofty ceiling. Her gaze drifted up to the ceiling’s twitching shadows and she halted, pierced by the ghastly memory of the woman’s body. The creaking rope. The dead eyes staring down at her.
“Justine?”
She gasped as a ghost stepped out of the gloom. A man. Firelight glinted off his blond hair.
“Father!” She ran to him and threw her arms around his neck and held on to him tightly with all the need of a child lost in a nightmare. From the warmth of him she realized she was cold to the bone.
“You’re shaking. Justine, what has happened?”
“Take me with you! Please, Father. Take me with you to France.”
He pried her away from him and took hold of her hands. “France? What are you talking about?”
“When you go with Mary. I beg you, let me go with you!”
“Child, you’re making no sense. This isn’t about . . . your friend Alice, is it? The man you mentioned?”
Rigaud. Oh God, she had forgotten. “No, no, I haven’t been there.”
“I see.” He squeezed her hands with fresh energy. “But you did deliver the message to Thornleigh, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“What?” he cried in dismay.
“Not to him. To Sir William Cecil.”
“Ah! Even better. And Cecil has taken it to Elizabeth?”
She nodded. It was difficult to think.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. He took the message to Whitehall. He is urging Her Majesty to agree. No, wait . . . was that yesterday? Yes, I saw him go yesterday.” She could not force her mind onto the matter. Her thoughts were still snagged in the horror. Will’s face, as white as his mother’s corpse. His hoarse questions. She had blurted in shock, “It’s my fault.” Shock had heaved the confession out of her, about her family, herself: “I am a Grenville.” And a cold grave of silence had opened between her and Will.
“Justine, you have done well,” her father said.
He was smiling, but misery racked Justine. Done well? She had brought everything crashing down around her and was stumbling through the rubble of her life. Will hated her. It was over. Just as his mother intended.
“Oh, Father . . . Father.” He was all she had now. The only person who loved her for herself. She clutched fistfuls of his shirt. “He hates me. Hates me.” She could not hold back the tears.
“Who hates you? What are you talking about?”
It came out of her in a rush of wretchedness. How she loved Will but had kept secret her identity even as they took their betrothal vows. How his mother had hated her and hanged herself. How Justine finally told him, over his mother’s body, and lost him forever.
“Good heavens,” he murmured, holding her to comfort her. “I had no idea. Poor Justine.”
His sympathy felt like balm. She sobbed in his embrace. He smelled faintly of smoke. Or was it just a fragment of memory? That night he had fled from Yeavering Hall. It sent a thought of Alice shuddering through her. I must see Rigaud. Must do that, for Alice. Two days, Rigaud had said. When did he say that? Her thoughts were a dark tangle, all thorns. She could not think straight. She clung to her father, adrift.
“Come, sit down.” He led her to a scatter of cushions on the floor by the little fire. She kneeled, feeling suddenly so drained she could have laid down and gladly sunk into the oblivion of sleep. He poured her a cup of wine from a bottle amongst his few belongings, and she took several deep swallows. The liquor shot fire to her empty stomach and fuzziness to her head.
“I am sorry for this crude place with so little to comfort you,” he said gently. “You know I cannot show my face in public. So I camp here as I wait.”
She was so grateful for his love and understanding, it took a moment to pull her mind back to what he meant. She dried her eyes with her sleeve. “Wait?”
“For Elizabeth’s reply. Whether she will come here to meet Lord Herries, aye or nay.”
“Ah, yes.” The rest of the world, beyond her private woe.
“She will send word to Frances.”
Justine nodded. “I believe she will come.” The wine, the warm little fire, the affection in her father’s face—she had found a haven and longed to stay safe within it, with him. “And when Mary’s abdication is settled you will return with her to France. You said so. All I want is to go with you.” She tried to smile. “You and I, Father, we will lighten each other’s exile.” But she could not hold on to the smile. Hot tears brimmed. “There is nothing for me here.”
Dusk was gathering when Christopher got the news. Frances beckoned him to the doorway to tell him. Justine lay asleep on the cushions by the small fire. Frances stood hugging herself, the fur trim on her cloak trembling in the draft. “Elizabeth has agreed,” she whispered.
His heart jumped. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
So fast! He could not believe his luck. “What time?”
“Just after dark. Cecil sent word. She will come in a fishing boat with five men-at-arms dressed as sailors. There must be no special preparations here to give away her identity. Herries must come alone. She will stay no more than an hour. Those are Cecil’s terms.”
He smiled. The hour would be Elizabeth’s last. As for Herries, Mary had agreed to sacrifice him. “You accepted, of course?”
She nodded. Now that it was arranged she seemed calmer, almost eager. Yet worry flitted across her face. “A pity to lose the old manor house.”
“Frances, when Mary is queen you shall build as many grand new mansions as you wish.”
A smile wobbled on her lips. She looked past him to the hearth where Justine lay sleeping. “Does she know?”
“Only what she needs to. Go now. And do not come back unless it’s urgent.”
He closed the door and came back to the hearth. He sat on a cushion beside Justine, feeling strangely empty. Now that victory was so near, he knew he should be elated. Or even feel the opposite, fear that something might yet go wrong. But he felt neither as he watched the fire’s glow flicker over his daughter’s face, her brow creasing in her fitful sleep. How relieved he had been to hear that she had not gone back to the witness. It
meant he had time to finish his mission, thank God. But what a sad tale she had told about the young man she loved, and his mother hanging herself. He felt a deep pang of regret. She loves a nephew of Richard Thornleigh, yet I, her father, knew nothing of it, played no part in advising her, guiding her. He had not even seen her grow to womanhood. He felt cheated of the years spent apart from her. The puny fire cringed in a draft, and Christopher looked around the room in anger at being an outlaw, forced to camp here in the barren vastness of his sister’s broken dream. The three of them—his daughter, his sister, and himself—had all been cheated of what was theirs. Yeavering Hall should be his. He should be baron, not Thornleigh.
A new thought reared up in his mind. Talking to Frances earlier to allay her fears about her husband, he had half wished Adam Thornleigh would indeed come home and die with Elizabeth. Rid the world of one more Thornleigh. But the member of that house that Christopher most wanted to see pay for his sins was the baron himself. Could he make that happen?
Justine awoke with a start. “What?” she cried, sitting bolt upright, looking about, disoriented.
“Shh. You’re safe here, child. All is well.”
She blinked, relaxing. “Father.” She rubbed her neck, sore from the makeshift bed. “You should have woken me.”
“You need sleep. And a proper bed. Go to your aunt now. She will see you are taken care of for the night.”
“I would rather stay with you.”
“I have some business to attend to. For Mary.” He lowered his voice, though there was not another soul in the entire deserted building. “Justine, Elizabeth comes here tomorrow.”
She brightened. “It’s arranged? She sent word to my aunt?”
“Yes, tomorrow night. The feast day of Saint Thomas à Becket.” He added, teasing, “You haven’t forgotten your saints’ days, I hope?”
“No, indeed.” She mustered a smile. “Saint Thomas. I am glad. Mary going to France is best for both queens.”
He wished he could tell her the truth. That the day after tomorrow one queen would be dead and the other would be awaiting Northumberland’s forces to restore a panicked country and crown her Queen Mary. But there was something he could share with Justine. In fact, he needed her. To settle his score with Thornleigh. “You shall not come with me to France,” he said.
She was about to protest, but he held up his hands to forestall her, though he was moved by the entreaty in her eyes. “Your place is in England, Justine. Your homeland. You should go back tomorrow morning to Thornleigh’s house. It is where you belong.”
“But why? They don’t trust me anymore. I told you, Father, there is nothing now to keep me here.”
“There is. A future. There is none for you in France. I cannot give you what Thornleigh can give you. A grand family name. A glittering match. You should marry an earl’s son.” It gave him pleasure to say so, for it was exactly what he intended for her. When Mary was queen of England she would raise Christopher to the peerage, and if he were made an earl his daughter deserved no lesser rank in her husband. But he could not tell her that. “No, I will not take you to France. You belong in England, and in England you shall stay.”
She slumped, dejectedly accepting it.
“But there is something I want you to do,” he said. “My name will always be a weight around your neck as long as the old feud festers between our families. I want to lift that weight.”
She looked curious despite her disappointment.
“Oh, I’ll admit, my kinfolk must bear their share of blame,” he went on. “Mind you, more Grenvilles died than Thornleighs. But the feud has gone on too long and has hurt too many people, including you. I want to end the lethal rancor, once and for all. Will you help me? Will you be the peacemaker?”
Her look was full of wonder. “I? How?”
“By bringing me and Thornleigh together. I will make an apology to him. I will grovel, if that’s what he wants. Whatever it takes I will do if it’s in my power. I want peace between us, finally. For your sake, Justine. For your future.”
“But he might hand you over to be hanged.”
“I think he will not. He has raised you like a daughter, hiding your name, which a scandal about me might unmask. Clearly he, too, wants an unblemished future for you. Let us hope he also wants peace.”
Her eyes brimmed. “You are such a good and generous man, Father. Tell me what I can do.”
Morning mist drifted over Cripplegate Ward where mourners threaded into St. Olave’s churchyard behind six pallbearers. Richard Thornleigh walked hand in hand with Honor at the head of the procession, preceded only by Will. Richard’s eyes, scratchy with grief, were fixed on his sister’s coffin. Poor, deranged Joan. He had never imagined her despair so deep that she would take her own life! To steady himself he wrapped his other hand around the hilt of his sword in its sheath. A memory flooded him of Joan as a child romping in their father’s barley field, laughing as she stuck a feather in the cap of the scarecrow. She was younger than Richard. She should not have died first. The plodding group turned as they passed through the church gate, and it seemed to him the coffin floated, barely touching the pallbearers’ shoulders. An illusion, he told himself. Stay rational.
His eyes fell again on Will ahead of him, Will’s back rigid with anguish. And with wrath at Justine, Richard knew. Will held her responsible for Joan’s death. That cut into Richard. What a tragic breach his sister had wrought between the two young people. What a heartbreaking, senseless tragedy. He heard a small sound of pain from Honor and suddenly realized he was crushing her hand. He let it go, the word sorry rising in him but not making it through his dry mouth. She took his hand again with a look of desolate but ardent solidarity. It moved him. He wanted to say thank you but could only nod, a feeble substitute.
He looked ahead down the path, and it pained him to see the freshly mounded earth beside the grave. Yet he was relieved that the procession was almost over. The walk from the house on Silver Street had been a trial, his right foot numb again. It occurred to him, with a pin-prick of bleak awareness, that no one noticed, since everyone was shuffling like him.
The black-robed vicar stood waiting at the grave. Like a vulture, was Richard’s thought. The vicar opened his prayer book, looking sour. My bribe should have sweetened him, Richard thought. The churchman had pocketed the gold and agreed to allow the cause of death to be entered in the parish register as “a sickly heart,” yet now he was barely hiding his disgust at a suicide being interred in hallowed ground. Richard didn’t give a damn. Nothing and no one would stop him from burying Joan beside her husband.
Everyone grouped around the grave, then halted. For a moment, silence. The morning was unseasonably warm, humid. Melting snow dripped off the church eaves. It felt oddly like spring, Richard thought. But it was winter. No green buds on the barren branches. No birdsong. Just the damp silence of death. Wasn’t this the feast day of Saint Thomas à Becket? He remembered Joan as a child asking in amazement how a king could order soldiers to murder an archbishop in his cathedral. She had whispered in awe, “That king must be in hell.”
Will stood like a headstone, so rigid it seemed to Richard he was not even breathing. Poor boy, he thought. Grief cannot be borne alone. Justine should be beside you.
Where was the girl? They had not seen her since yesterday. His first thought was that she had gone to Adam’s house in Chelsea, but Adam was in Portsmouth and Richard knew Justine had never warmed to Frances, so it seemed an unlikely place for her to seek comfort. He hoped she had gone to see a sympathetic friend. The Langly girl’s house, perhaps. Or the Fosters. But why not send him word? Too shaken, he supposed. No wonder. It rocked him, remembering the awful scene he had found at Joan’s house. Her manservant, Joseph, said he saw Justine stumbling out of the house soon after finding the body.
“She found Joan . . . hanging?”
“Aye, my lord.” Joseph had shaken his head, overwhelmed. “I were in my bed in the attic and I heard her and M
aster Will exchange words. Couldn’t tell what they said, just voices, edgy-like and fast speaking. Then a scream from Susan. I hurried down to see what was amiss, and there was Susan keening over the mistress’s body where they’d laid on her bed, and Master Will staring at Mistress Thornleigh like she’d killed his mother with her bare hands.”
Later, when Richard could get Will, still in shock, to talk, Will had told him about Justine’s confession. Her deceit, as he put it. “A Grenville,” he had said in a voice as tight as wire. “She’s a Grenville .”
Sorrow had swept Richard. The feud had claimed another victim. Joan had laid up her hate for years, like so much kindling, until it finally blazed and consumed her. Justine was only the spark.
And now, where was the girl? What hell must she be suffering? She is paying for our feud, he thought. Another victim.
The prayers drifted past his ears, an indistinct drone. The coffin was lowered into the grave. Will took a shovel and cast on the first earth. The pebbled dirt pattered on the coffin lid. Richard swallowed a choke of grief and closed his eyes to say a silent farewell to his sister. He heard the mourners shuffle away. When he looked up, he was alone with Will. Honor was leading Joan’s weeping servant, Susan, toward a bench by the church wall, Honor’s arm around her. Two gravediggers slowly came forward, giving Richard an apologetic look that said the job had to be done. They began shoveling earth into the grave.
Richard turned to Will. “I don’t know what’s happened to Justine. We have to find her. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”
“No.” He watched the earth thudding onto the coffin. “Nor do I care.”
“Will, she must be in a terrible state. She could be wandering somewhere. She could be hurt.”
“What’s that to me?”
“Don’t talk nonsense. You love the girl.”
“I loved someone. Not her. That’s over.”
Barbara Kyle - [Thornleigh 05] Page 35