Barbara Kyle - [Thornleigh 05]

by Blood Between Queens

  25

  Den of Thieves

  Torches on posts lit the Kilburn Manor jetty as Adam Thornleigh’s wherry skimmed alongside. Adam was so anxious to see his children, he hopped out before the boat had stopped. Sickness in the house, Frances had written. He tossed the wherryman a sovereign for bringing him from the Admiralty, far too much money, but he had no time to poke in pockets for smaller coins. He was wealthy now since Elizabeth had given him a tenth of the Spanish gold. All he wanted was to see Katherine and Robert. Frances’s note had been so brief, so abrupt, he had no idea what he was going to find. Who was sick? What kind of sickness? The very terseness of her warning made him think she’d been too upset to give details, and what could distress her that much except a terribly sick child?

  Lost in these thoughts as he went down the jetty to the house, he didn’t notice the fishing smack until he was abeam it. A weathered but worthy old craft. It was tethered in the shadows, away from the torchlight, its single sail lowered. Had the crew put in here to check on some damage aboard? Two men stood in the darkness at the rail. They wore fisherman’s drab homespun garments but looked like no fishermen Adam had ever seen. Clean-shaven. Alert. And wearing polished swords. From the Admiralty? But why come in this guise?

  “Are you looking for me?” He introduced himself. “Do you have business with me?”

  “No, sir. Not you, sir,” one of them said, concise as a soldier.

  “Who, then?”

  “I can’t say, sir.”

  Adam was taken aback. What kind of answer was that? “Are you here to see my steward?”

  “No, sir.”

  No, indeed. The hour was far too late for any manor business. Perhaps one of their fellows had gone inside for a romantic tryst with a housemaid? The servants’ behavior was Frances’s purview. He would have questioned them further, but his thoughts kept running back to his children. Sickness. He looked up at his house. Over half the windows were dark. “I’ll talk to you men later.”

  He went up the steps to the building, thinking of Robert as a baby. Born weeks early, so tiny, so weak. And now, at six, still small for his age. If plague had struck the house, little Robin would have no chance. Nor Katherine. The thought of losing his daughter sent a shudder through him. My Kate. He would rather die himself. No, stop imagining the worst, he told himself. He was letting his fears run away with him. It could not be anything as terrible as plague. News of plague in Chelsea would have hit London like a squall; he would have heard.

  Nevertheless, the moment he was inside the house, he went straight up to their room. The staircase was dimly lit by rushlights and all was quiet. A good sign, surely. If the servants had gone calmly to bed, the sickness could not be serious.

  He reached the children’s bedchamber door. It opened with a whisper of air. The room lay in darkness. He went to the bed the children shared. Empty. Neatly made. He looked around half expecting to hear giggling in the shadows, the two of them watching him, playing a trick. But there was silence.

  He stared at the bed’s neatly tucked covers and dread crept over him. Both dead? Taken away? That boat. Had it brought the undertaker?

  Stop, he ordered himself again. He didn’t know why such morbid fears were plaguing him. Something about the silence here. And that boat.

  Where was Frances? Maybe the children were with her?

  He headed for her bedchamber.

  The tenements in the ruined palace of the Savoy echoed with the barking of dogs. Justine could not stop shivering, and with every shiver the leather cord chafed her wrists bound at her back. She sat on a crumbled, fallen pillar in a dark corner. Across the room a fire spat and leapt inside a cauldron set on the stone floor. The charred walls rose to a ceiling where painted angels, once bright, were grimed with soot. Stars glinted through a jagged hole in the roof.

  Justine’s eyes flicked between the man who stood beside her, guarding her, and the boys sitting around the cauldron—nine boys, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, but so stunted by poverty some looked like children. Thieves. They were engrossed in feasting on a roast goose one had stolen from a cookhouse. Their world was so foreign to Justine that she had no idea how much she had to fear from them. But the man beside her she did fear. A hulking, fleshy man like a wrestler. Gorm, her father had called him.

  Father. He had brought her to this place. A prisoner. Had ordered Gorm to tie her hands behind her back.

  “Forgive me, child. It pains me to have to do this,” he had said as Gorm bound her wrists.

  “Then don’t.” She could hardly bear to look at him. But she had to if there was any chance of stopping him. “Take flight for France. Sail away now and never come back, and no one will ever know about tonight. I promise you.”

  He looked at her sadly. “Would you not miss me just a little, now that we have found each other again?” He jerked his chin at Gorm, an order to step away. When they were alone he went on, “Justine, if anything goes wrong tonight . . . I mean, if I do not see you again—”

  “So you’re going back? To kill Elizabeth?”

  “I want you to know,” he said as if she had not spoken, “how happy it has made me to find you. I want you to understand why I am doing this. England is—”

  “Your plan is madness. It’s wrong. It’s a sin!”

  “Quite the opposite, child. In ridding the realm of a heretic tyrant, I am doing God’s work. And I want you to know that I am doing it for you. For your future. The future of our house. Our people. The future of England.”

  A voice inside her wailed, My house is the house of Thornleigh. They are my people! She looked around, desperate for someone to help her. The boy thieves ignored her and her father. It struck her in dismay that they were used to seeing him come and go. This derelict mansion must be where he had hidden while running his mission for Mary. Mary, she thought suddenly. “Does Mary know?”

  Again, he ignored her question. “I realize how much this troubles you now. Naturally, since Thornleigh has poisoned your mind and your heart. But later, after—”

  “You used me to lure him to Chelsea. Why? What are you going to do to him?”

  He flinched. “It grieves me to see you so distraught. Especially for him.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. She froze, trying with all her might not to squirm at his touch. He rested his cheek on the top of her head. His voice was raw. “Justine, you cannot imagine the hell I have endured. An exile. Without family. Without home. Without you. It is a living death.” He let her go to look at her, and hope stole over his face. “But after tonight everything will change. I will come back for you. We will attend the coronation of Queen Mary. Our house will be restored. Ennobled. Once you are the daughter of an earl, you will thank me.”

  She looked into his eyes and saw tears. It rocked her. His affection for her was real.

  But so was her horror. How could she stop him? She didn’t even know how he planned to execute his terrible scheme. Could she find out by dissembling? It seemed her only hope. “I know you have suffered . . . Father. I do understand. But what you are planning is too dangerous. You could die. Elizabeth is well guarded. They will kill you before you even get near her.”

  His look was sly. “I will not have to. When I served Mary in Edinburgh I attended Bothwell’s trial for the murder of Lord Darnley, and I learned valuable facts. Exactly how much gunpowder is necessary to blow up a house.”

  It stunned her. Lord Darnley, assassinated at Kirk o’ Field. It was said that most of Edinburgh had felt the explosion. Now her father was going to blow up Kilburn Manor? She was so horrified, further pretense was impossible. “Dear God,” she whispered.

  “Ah,” he said with satisfaction, “you see that it is possible.”

  “I see that you are a monster. You killed Alice Boyer!”

  He flinched again. “That was . . . an error. She recognized me. I am heartily sorry for it. I have done penance, Justine. But believe me, it had to be done.”

  “
Why?” she wailed. “Why poor Alice?”

  A door seemed to close in his eyes. “Enough talk. I must go.” He beckoned Gorm. “I will come back for you, Justine. We will put all this unpleasantness behind us.” Pulling out a purse, he paid Gorm, dropping coins into his palm. He turned back to Justine and stroked her cheek with sad fondness. “Pray for me, child.”

  And then he was gone, vanishing into the dark passageway.

  Now she watched the boys. And Gorm. He stood near her, leaning against the crumbling stone wall, his arms crossed, his small eyes fixed with amusement on the boys’ actions. He was the one she had to get past. If she could manage that, she would run. She had to warn them at Kilburn Manor. If she failed, Elizabeth would die. And Lord Thornleigh.

  The boys had finished wolfing the stolen goose and were now busy at their work. Pickpockets and cutpurses, learning their trade. They sat watching a freckle-faced boy who was on his feet approaching a satin doublet that hung from a wire. Small hawks’ bells had been sewn on the doublet’s hem, and on the pocket flap a little sacring bell hung, the kind once used in church at the elevation of the host.

  “Go on. Try it,” a tall boy said. He was the instructor, teaching the younger ones.

  The student circled the hanging doublet. He stopped and snaked his hand up toward the pocket. The tall boy walked past him and knocked him against the garment. All the bells all rang. Gorm laughed.

  The tall boy cuffed the student’s ear. “You’ll get jostled like that in a crowd, so be ready for it.” The others shook their heads, murmuring at the hapless student’s error. The tall boy said, “Sit down, runt. Alf, come and show ’im how.”

  Gorm was enjoying the show, and Justine willed him to keep his attention there. The fallen pillar she sat on was at the end of a row of erect pillars, and beyond them lay a dark corridor. She didn’t know where it led—she had been too terrified to take note when her father had Gorm drag her in through the warren of rooms. But there had to be several ways out of the ruined palace, and once she was free of Gorm she would find one. She would run.

  “That’s showing ’im,” said the lead boy proudly as the expert, Alf, slipped his hand out of the doublet pocket without jangling a single bell. Grinning, Alf opened his hand and coin-sized lead disks spilled out, clattering over the broken stone floor. “Grab a counter, each of you,” the instructor told the boys. “Anyone who can’t, they don’t eat tomorrow.” They dove for the disks. Gorm laughed at their skirmishing. Justine kept her eyes fixed on him. Just get to the corridor beyond the pillars. Then maybe she could lose him. Gorm threw back his head, laughing.

  Now.

  She jumped up. She took two strides, about to break into a run, when Gorm stuck out his leg. She tripped on his foot and tumbled, hitting the floor on her shoulder. Stone scraped her cheek. Pain seared through her.

  Gorm’s boot came down on her back. She squirmed at the agony of her hip bones being ground against the floor. He called to the boys, “Why not try with a live one?” His tucked his boot toe under Justine’s rib, pried her body up, and flipped her over onto her bound hands. Pain shot like fire to her shoulders.

  She looked up in horror. The boys were crowding around her.

  Adam swung open the door to the bedchamber. “Frances?”

  The room was dark. The bed-curtains were open and on the bed gowns lay helter-skelter amid strewn linens, pewter goblets, papers. The clothes chest under the window stood open, its contents ransacked, leaving a wool stocking snagged on a corner. The strongbox that Adam kept under the bed had been pulled out and stood open, empty of its gold and silver coins.

  We’ve been robbed. Adam turned back to the door. Had that boat outside brought the thieves? Were they still in the house? And where was his family?

  He hurried back down the stairs, making the rushlights on the wall tremble in his wake. He turned toward the great hall, but stopped in the gloom when he saw that the doors were shut and four men stood guard. Seeing him, they drew their swords. They wore homespun clothes like the men in the boat but they stood rock still, watching him, ready to defend but not attack. As disciplined as soldiers, Adam thought. It made no sense to him. Thieves would not act this way. Who were these people? He thought of the Spanish ambassador, de Spes, and his fury at the death of his kinsman after Adam’s attack. A fury fed by the pirate attack on the Nuestra Señora which gossip credited to Adam. Had de Spes sent these men to rob him in revenge? Worse, had they kidnapped Robin and Kate? Or were they holding his wife and children in the hall behind those doors?

  He could not fight four men. He backed away. The guards made no move to stop him.

  He considered running up to the servants’ quarters on the third floor and rousing the footmen from their beds. But Frances had hired new men while he’d been in the Indies, and they were strangers to him. He didn’t know if they could fight, or would.

  The stable, then. He knew the grooms.

  Down the passage he went and pushed out the back door. He was heading for the stable, trying to make sense of what he’d seen—why would thieves, even kidnappers, shut themselves up in the great hall?—when he heard a scraping and grunting. He stopped and made out a figure slowly dragging something across the courtyard. The darkness made it hard to see, but he could tell it was a woman, and she was struggling to pull a heavy sack that clanked over the flagstones. It was Frances.

  He ran to her. “Frances, what’s happened?”

  “Adam!” She froze.

  “Where are the children?”

  She gaped at him, still hunched over the sack. “No! No, you cannot be here!”

  “Who are those men in the house?”

  “No . . . no,” she gibbered. She looked almost terrorized, obsessively gripping the sack. He had to get her to speak rationally. He took hold of her shoulders, breaking her hold on the sack. Its contents shifted, clattering. “Tell me what’s happening.” He almost shook her. “Have they got Robert and Kate?”

  “We must get away! Come, Adam. Come!” She was pointing at the door in the courtyard’s west wall. She lunged for the sack. “Away to the river!”

  “What are you talking about?” Beyond that door was nothing but the marshy banks of the River Westbourne, which fed the Thames. “Frances, where are the children?”

  “Come with me.” She began dragging the sack. “To safety!”

  Will Croft had been at his mother’s house when the children arrived. His friend John Stubbs, the newly ordained vicar, was helping him pack his mother’s belongings, some things to go to friends, some to the poor in Stubbs’s parish. It was a heartbreaking business and Will was carrying it out mindlessly, like a sleepwalker. Having spiraled through shock, anger, and grief, he had reached a state of drained acceptance that left him almost numb. Stubbs was in the parlor packing candlesticks and Will was coming downstairs from his mother’s room with an armload of her books when the two children staggered in through the front door, out of breath and bedraggled. Will stopped on the staircase in surprise. His cousin Adam’s little girl Katherine and his son Robert. The last time he’d seen them was months ago, the night of his uncle’s fireworks for the Queen.

  “Grandmamma!” Katherine called, looking around for her.

  “She’s gone home,” Will said, coming down the steps. Lady Thornleigh had been helping him but had left about a half hour ago. The children’s pale, frightened faces alarmed him. They looked exhausted, as if they’d been running for hours. What were they doing out at night, all alone? “Katherine, what’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Master Croft, it’s Justine!” the girl cried. Her little brother burst into tears.

  The story gushed out of Katherine. They had gone in their mother’s boat with Justine, who had put them ashore at Blackfriars and told them to get to their grandfather’s house, but two strange men jumped into the boat and dragged her out and forced her along Fleet Street. The children had followed them. “They took her into the Savoy! We did not dare go in. Mama says it’s a wicked place. Oh,
please, Master Croft, save her!” Katherine and her sobbing brother pressed against Will’s leg for comfort.

  He laid his hand on their heaving, hot little backs, his mind lurching. Justine. The terrible things he had said to her over his mother’s body swarmed back, every vile word he had hurled at her in his shock at her confessing she was a Grenville. She had fled that morning in anguish, and Will, cruelly, had let her go. His uncle had tried to talk sense to him over his mother’s grave, “She hid the truth because she loves you,” but Will had been immovable, too wounded, too angry. It was as if he had shut down his heart, as if he were dead. Now these two sobbing children shook him back to life. Justine was in danger, abducted, a prisoner in the Savoy. Nothing mattered except saving her.

  “Your betrothed, Will?” Stubbs asked gravely. He stood in the doorway to the parlor, candlesticks in his hands. He had heard the children’s tale.

  “Can I take your horse, John?” Will was on his way to the front door.

  “You can’t do this alone,” Stubbs said.

  “I’m going to ask my neighbor if he’ll come.” The goldsmith’s son, Thomas, was a strapping fellow two years younger than Will. Will had tutored him. “You two,” he said to the children, “stay here.”

  “The Savoy’s a rough place,” Stubbs said. “I’ll come, too.”

  The three of them—Will, Stubbs, and Thomas Pierson—rode fast through the dark streets of London. Searching the echoing ruins of the Savoy, they skirted men in tatters slumped in corners asleep and dodged others squatting around puny fires who looked at them with dull, suspicious eyes. Will noticed the light of a large fire in a cauldron far down a columned passageway, and a murmur of chatter drew him toward it. When he was a stone’s throw from the cauldron, he caught a glimpse of Justine that horrified him. She lay on the floor surrounded by a gang of young cutpurses who were chattering and laughing, one big man with them. Will halted his friends with a gesture that said, “Quiet!” and motioned for them to duck behind the columns.