The King's Daughter

by Barbara Kyle

  Wyatt’s soldiers tried to defend themselves but they were no match for quick-maneuvering cavalry who could wield lethal swords from the height of their mounts. A young soldier screamed as his back was ripped open by a horseman’s slashing blade. Another kneeled in the mud in terror with his arms wrapped over his head. Two horsemen galloped after a soldier running away. The running man was knocked down by the first horse, and the following horseman crushed the fallen man’s ribcage under one merciless hoof.

  Carlos galloped ahead to the vanguard where a bearded man sat his horse and shouted orders. It had to be Wyatt. Carlos counted six other mounted officers, all looking slightly dazed, but none near Wyatt. Carlos galloped forward, his sword outthrust. He wanted to take Wyatt alive. The reward would be greater.

  Foot soldiers staggered out of Carlos’s way. Wyatt saw him coming. His sword was drawn as well. Carlos tore on, closing the gap between them. But instead of slashing his sword at Wyatt as he passed, or reining up alongside him to fight, Carlos came galloping straight at his side and rammed his horse into Wyatt’s. Wyatt pitched sideways out of his saddle and hit the ground.

  The two horses whinnied in pain and danced awkwardly to find their balance. Carlos slapped the flat side of his sword on Wyatt’s horse’s rump. The animal bounded away. Carlos wheeled again, then rode back toward Wyatt who had staggered to his feet. Carlos galloped forward and was almost on him when Wyatt suddenly toppled to the ground. Carlos saw that a man had thrown himself at Wyatt’s legs, knocking him down to save him. It was Richard Thornleigh.

  Carlos wheeled again, about to try once more to get back to Wyatt, but by now several of Wyatt’s officers and men had crowded around their leader and held swords and pikes outstretched, forming a bristling human armor around him. And Carlos saw one of Wyatt’s horsemen barreling toward him. He realized he could not reach Wyatt. He was alone here without the backup of infantry—he had hoped that Pembroke would have rushed in to cover his attack, but there was no sign of Pembroke. So he veered away and galloped back toward the center of Wyatt’s company.

  Or what was left of it. Scores of Wyatt’s men lay writhing and gasping in the mud. Carlos’s horsemen continued to cut them down with ferocity but with little organization. Despite Carlos’s earlier yelled order that they flank Wyatt’s entire column, most of the horsemen had got no further than the middle of it before plowing in to attack. The result was that the horsemen were embroiled in a melee with Wyatt’s center, while his rear guard was escaping and his vanguard was running forward to Ludgate.

  Suddenly, five of Wyatt’s mounted officers bore down on Carlos’s horsemen in a bid to let their vanguard escape. Carlos managed to turn his men to this attack, chiefly by leading it with his own slashing sword. Enmeshed in this fray, Carlos glanced toward Wyatt’s vanguard. Wyatt was leading them, on the run, toward London Wall a quarter mile in the distance. Carlos could just make out Ludgate itself. He was shocked at what he saw there. Were the doors really standing wide open?

  A pike seared across his thigh, ripping his breeches and tearing his skin. He twisted back to see the foot soldier readying to strike again. Carlos slashed his sword across theman’s throat. As the man toppled, Carlos cursed himself for having looked away. The pain in his thigh was hot as pitch, and blood was already soaking his knee, but the pike had not cut deeply into muscle. He went back into the fight against Wyatt’s officers. When it was done, two of the officers were dead, two had been unhorsed and lay wounded. The last one was fleeing at a gallop behind a veil of churned-up mud.

  Hundreds of the men of Wyatt’s rearguard were fleeing too. They headed in every direction. Some were running back the way they had come, many were disappearing behind houses and down the lanes that led to the river.

  But Carlos was concerned only with Wyatt. The rebel leader, with about three hundred of his men left, was rushing on, very close to Ludgate.

  Inside Ludgate the two factions, Lord Howard’s loyalists and Henry Peckham’s rebels, had fallen back to fierce fighting. Howard’s men had advanced a little toward the gate, and the archers’ arrows from the roofs had taken their toll of Peck-ham’s men. But the archers had to be restrained in their fire, finding it difficult to separate rebel from royalist in the hand-to-hand fighting below them. Amid this confusion, Peck-ham’s men were stoutly maintaining their defensive line at the gate.

  Isabel pushed away from the alley wall and moved out around the corner. Bodies lay strewn in the mud like discarded rags. The wounded were crawling or staggering away toward the sides of the street. Isabel caught a glimpse of Legge near the gate, holding a man in a vicious headlock. She saw Peckham throttling a gasping man on his knees. She saw Grenville, still on horseback, hacking his sword at a man with a pike. She saw Sydenham, still cowering in the tavern doorway.

  And Ludgate still stood open.

  Isabel looked up at the archers on the roof of the Belle Sauvage. The strong sun, climbing to its noonday zenith, made silhouettes of their bodies. They stood with legs apart, their arrows fitted in their bows and the bowstrings pulled taut to their chests, forming a frieze of deadly potential.

  Isabel could hold back no longer.

  She raced toward Legge as he dragged the man he was fighting down to the earth. A tall comrade of Legge’s kicked the fallen man.

  “Master Legge!” she shouted.

  He looked up in astonishment. “Isabel! What in God’s—”

  “Follow me!” she cried. She grabbed the arm of Legge’s comrade. “You too! Help us!” She ran past them both, and they stared after her in confusion.

  Isabel ran straight toward Henry Peckham’s ragged line defending the gate. Peckham was wiping sweat from his brow, his strangled victim at his feet, when he caught sight of Isabel. He quickly nodded to her, an unthinking acknowledgment of her right to pass. Legge and his friend exchanged quick glances of amazement at her success, then bolted forward to join her. Peckham, believing the men with her were friends, let them pass and then lunged for a royalist coming at him with a dagger.

  Isabel and Legge and the tall man raced toward the open timber doors under Ludgate ‘s high stone arch. Isabel grasped the big iron fitting at the edge of one door. She tried to push the door closed. It was too heavy. “Help me!” she cried to the tall man. “Master Legge, close the other door!”

  Legge dashed across the gap to the other door. He had just taken hold of its iron bolt when someone lunged at him from behind, knocking him forward. Legge turned and swung his fist at the man’s jaw, felling him.

  Isabel whipped around to see Edward Sydenham coming at her with his bare hands uplifted like claws.

  Thornleigh’s leg muscles and lungs screamed in pain. He had run nonstop after escaping the attack of Carlos’s cavalry, and he ran on now, ignoring the pain, ignoring the questionsthat the sight of Carlos had unleashed, because now he could see Ludgate’s doors standing open less than a quarter mile ahead.

  Wyatt was running beside him. And Thornleigh thought there must be three hundred of their men running behind them. Most were out of breath, many were bleeding, but all were unquestioningly following Wyatt. And, like Thornleigh, Wyatt’s eyes were fixed on their goal, their haven, their reward—the big wide-open doors of Ludgate. They were going to make it in.

  Then Thornleigh heard it again—the murderous thunder of a cavalry charge. He twisted around. It was the Spaniard again. His horsemen fell on their rear, again. And tore them to pieces, again.

  But again, Wyatt stumbled free and carried on with a fraction of his company. Now, there were no more than fifty of them. And Thornleigh stuck by Wyatt’s side.

  Sydenham’s hands were almost at Isabel’s throat when Legge butted his head into Sydenham’s side. Sydenham thudded to the ground, the wind knocked out of him. He clawed at the muddy cobbles in a frenzy to get up, but Legge’s tall comrade grabbed him by the feet and hauled him to one side to clear the door’s path, while Legge ran back to the other door. Isabel stared at Sydenham in amazement: he had trie
d to stop her from closing the gate. He seemed obsessed, beyond caring whether he was jeopardizing Queen Mary’s throne as long as his scheme to have the archer kill her father succeeded.

  A shudder ran through her as she realized that her betrayal of Wyatt was no less grotesque.

  There was no time for such thoughts.

  She lunged for the door and grabbed hold of the iron bar and pushed. Her muscles quivered with the effort, but still the door did not move. The tall man rushed back to help her. Isabel turned and threw her back against the door. Across the gap, Legge was pushing hard at the other door, his shoulder against it, his face red. Grunting with the labor, Isabel finally felt her door budge. It began to move slowly. So did Legge’s door.

  The huge hinges creaked, the heavy timber doors gained momentum, and Isabel had to hasten her walk into a lope to keep up. She and the tall man were almost running with the door when, with Legge’s door edge just an arm’s length from hers, she looked out and saw Wyatt’s meager troop staggering down Fleet Street toward her. She caught sight of Wyatt at the head, and of her father at Wyatt’s side. Her father gazed at her, shocked, unbelieving. Wyatt saw her too. The last glimpse Isabel had, like an arrow piercing her eye, was of Wyatt’s stunned face.

  The doors slammed shut. Legge drove home the long iron bolt.

  Edward Sydenham heard Howard’s men cheer. He scrambled to his feet and saw why. Isabel and the two men had succeeded in closing the gate.

  An archer on the gatehouse rooftop, pointing out to Fleet Street, shouted jubilantly, “The Queen’s cavalry are routing the rebels! The rebels are falling!”

  Howard’s men cheered more wildly. The closed gate infused new strength into them and simultaneously drained it from Peckham’s men. All around Edward, Howard’s loyalists began striking stronger blows and Peckham’s men began falling.

  Edward felt dizzy with hope and fear. If Wyatt’s soldiers were dying outside the gate there was every reason to hope that Thornleigh was dying too. Maybe he already lay dead. But with the gate shut it was impossible to know. Edward’s eyes fell on the small door of the walkway that led under London Wall. It was closed. What if, just beyond the gate, Thornleigh was running toward the walkway, about to burst in here looking for the man he hated?

  Edward pulled the pistol from his doublet and ran for the small door and opened it. He fumbled to load the pistol as he stepped into the stone walkway, a tunnel through the eight foot thickness of London Wall. The door at the opposite end was shut. The door behind Edward creaked shut, too. There was no light in the tunnel. Edward walked on, his footsteps echoing, the old terror of small places invading him again and tightening every nerve. He heard the muffled shouts and cries of men as he approached the far door. Reaching it in the darkness, he clawed over its wooden surface to find the bolt. Slivers gouged his palms, but he finally wrenched the bolt aside. He kicked open the door and ran outside … and gasped at the scene of battle before him.

  Carlos called it mayhem. Pembroke’s infantry had finally arrived and a troop of Clinton’s cavalry, too—all to subdue the pitiful remnant of Wyatt’s army, no more than fifty men. The rebels fought bravely, but their resistance was hopeless. Vastly outnumbered, they were slipping in mud, crawling through puddles, bleeding, and dying. Some managed to escape the blows of the converging royalists and dashed in all directions away from closed Ludgate. They ran, slid around house corners, careened down lanes toward the river.

  Carlos saw Wyatt standing still with an expression of disbelief on his mud-flecked face. Carlos galloped toward him.

  Isabel was almost knocked down by a rebel soldier running toward a lane. After closing the huge gate she’d caught sight of Sydenham, and one look at his white face as he drew out his pistol had told her the worst. She had hurried after him through the walkway under London Wall, hoping somehow to stop him. But now, in the melee before her of soldiers running and horses rearing and men fighting and shouting and falling, she had lost Sydenham. Nor could she see her father. If she could only reach him she could pull him away down a lane to the maze of docks and breweries on the riverfront. She could hide him there. If she could just find him before Sydenham did.

  A horseman galloped past and Isabel lurched out of his way, then gasped. Though his face was turned from her, she would recognize him anywhere. Carlos.

  Edward had forced himself to come toward the fighting, but he cringed on the edge of the fray, terrified of getting closer, yet burning with a need to locate Thornleigh, dead or alive. His pistol trembled in his hand. And then, through the mass of fighting bodies, he glimpsed a tall man, gray haired, with a patch over his left eye—just as Isabel had described him. Edward’s heart thudded in his chest, then seemed to stop, for Richard Thornleigh was looking straight at him.

  “Sydenham?” Thornleigh called, hoarse, unsure. Edward flinched—and knew he had betrayed himself. Thornleigh advanced on him, moving through the melee steadily, implacably, stalking Edward.

  Edward held up the pistol in both hands to stop the trembling. But men were running past in his line of fire. He could not get a clear shot.

  Wyatt’s face showed that he knew it was over. He looked up and saw Carlos coming, and his sword drooped at his side.

  Carlos reined in alongside him. “Sir Thomas Wyatt?”

  Wyatt nodded bleakly. He turned his sword so that he grasped the tip, the handle uplifted toward Carlos. Carlos accepted the gesture of surrender. He took Wyatt’s sword and sheathed it in his saddle. He beckoned over a lieutenant to bind the captive’s wrists with rope. Carlos looked the rebel commander in the eye and said, “I arrest you in the name of the Queen.”

  * * *

  Isabel froze. Searching for Sydenham and her father she had suddenly caught sight of them both. Her father was walking steadily toward Sydenham. And Sydenham leveled a pistol at her father.

  She twisted around and saw Carlos. She did not stop to think. She ran to him and grabbed his stirrup. He looked down at her in amazement. She pointed to Sydenham. “You hate him too!” she cried. “Stop him!”

  Edward cocked the trigger and fired. The ball whizzed by Thornleigh’s ear. Thornleigh kept on coming. He reached Edward and swatted the pistol out of his grasp. He grabbed Edward’s throat. Edward clawed at Thornleigh’s arms, felt Thornleigh’s thumbs jamming his windpipe, felt his throat on fire. Suddenly, Thornleigh let him go and slumped to the ground on his knees. A royalist soldier had jabbed a broken lance against his ribs, then twisted around to fight another opponent. Thornleigh toppled onto his back and lay in the mud groaning.

  Edward saw his chance. Still choking from Thornleigh’s attack he dropped to all fours, crawled to the fallen pistol, grabbed it, and scrambled back to Thornleigh, who still lay moaning. Edward steadied himself on his knees, snatched another ball from inside his doublet, loaded the pistol. He pressed the barrel end to Thornleigh’s temple.

  “Alto!”

  Edward looked up. The sun glared behind the man on horseback, but Edward knew the voice. The Spaniard. He twisted back to Thornleigh and cocked the trigger.

  The flat of the Spaniard’s sword smashed his wrist so violently it spun Edward around on his knees and the pistol flew out of his hand. He screamed as pain seared up his arm.

  “Edward Sydenham,” Carlos said, baring his teeth in an icy smile of satisfaction. “I find you with the rebels. I arrest you in the name of the Queen.”

  * * *

  Isabel had rushed to her father as he lay on the ground, wincing at the pain in his side. “My God,” he breathed through clenched teeth. “It was you … at the gate. Why, Isabel? How could you—”

  “Father, come with me!” She struggled to help him up. “We can run down to the river. We can get away!”

  A trumpet blared. Isabel frantically looked around. The commotion all around her had changed. It was no longer the clash of battle but the clamor of victory. Through the crush of men she glimpsed Carlos watching her from his horse. Lord Howard was riding toward them, followed by
a pack of his Whitecoat officers, and behind them came a throng of cheering London householders, both men and women. Lord Howard ordered his officers to arrest the rebels that were here and round up the ones who’d run away.

  Desperate, Isabel grabbed her father’s arm and pulled him to his feet. She could still get him away in the confusion, get him down to the river, hide him. It was still possible, if only she could make him move! If only he’d stop looking at her with such disgust.

  Lord Howard pulled his horse to a halt before Wyatt and glared down at the rebel commander. “A kingdom you have risked, Wyatt, and nothing have you gained. Except a date with the executioner.” He prodded his sword tip at the rope that bound Wyatt’s wrists. He looked around at the soldiers. “Who is responsible for this arrest?”

  “I am,” Carlos answered, edging his horse forward.

  Howard frowned at him. “Did you also lead the charge from Charing Cross?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Valverde.”

  “Ah, yes, Abergavenny’s Spaniard.” Howard’s frown broke into a broad smile. “Well done, Valverde. A fine day’s work. Believe me, Her Majesty will show you her gratitude most generously.”

  “With land?”

  Howard laughed. “With whatever your heart desires, I warrant!” He turned to one of his officers and jerked his chin toward Wyatt. “Take the traitor away.”

  The officer hustled Wyatt off like a common thief.