Queen's Ransom

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  No one asked what had finally happened to the captive. It would have been a silly question. Jenkinson had natural charm, but it was a velvet covering over a chain-mail gauntlet.

  He also had a resonant, flexible speaking voice, and that curious thing known as presence. He was capable of holding even a reluctant audience.

  “And so?” Charpentier, however weary, dirty, and furious about the disaster to his inn, was growing interested in spite of himself.

  “I talked with my men,” Jenkinson said, “and we decided to make it more difficult for the enemy by dividing our forces. I was carrying two signed copies of the treaty. We changed course, reached a small port, and hired some extra men as additional protection for the main party and the goods caravan, which I sent off on our planned route, in charge of a man I could trust. One copy of the treaty went with him. The other copy I kept on my person. With three companions I then set off home but by a very different route.”

  Here he paused and smiled. It was a wicked and engaging smile. I had a feeling—an awed feeling, I may say—that I knew what was coming next.

  “I decided,” he said, “that the safest thing to do was the most unexpected. The Levantine Lions represent the interests of Turkey and Venice. They wouldn’t expect me to appear, therefore, in either place. So I arranged passages for us to Istanbul.”

  We gazed, fascinated, at this insouciant adventurer whose idea of avoiding dangerous and well-organized enemies was to saunter into the heart of their territory.

  “You say your name’s Anthony,” I said. “Shouldn’t it be Daniel?”

  Jenkinson smiled again. “Maybe it should, because after all, I think somebody did recognize me. Merchants go everywhere. Every great fair brings them together from far-flung places. I daresay that in every city of Europe or the Levant, there’s someone who knows me by sight. Though God knows, I was careful. I did have an idea of revealing myself and complaining to the authorities, because I doubt if the Levantine Lions are official in any way. English relations with both countries are good and I don’t see the rulers of either Turkey or Venice wanting to wreck them by assassinating respectable merchants. But I decided not to risk it. It wouldn’t be the first time a government’s right hand hasn’t been quite clear about what its left hand was doing.

  “I took the name of Van Weede and melted into the scenery—or so I thought—as a Netherlands merchant interested in luxury goods. Most ships were laid up for the winter but there’s always coastal and short-haul traffic. I managed to get us to Rome—changing ships at Athens—and I thought I’d escaped. I lost a man on the voyage to Rome, but that was through some sickness or other that he’d picked up in Turkey. That left me with the two you saw last night. They’re still having breakfast.”

  “Remarkable swordsmen,” Brockley observed.

  “Are they not? Stephen Longman and Richard Deacon, their names are. Deacon fights like a leopard, and though Longman isn’t so very tall, he has shoulders like a bear and can kill a man by picking him up and hugging him. I took them on as lads and I trained them myself,” said Jenkinson smugly, “and though I say it myself, they’re a credit to me. Well, we got to Rome, and then we were attacked in the street after dark. I was glad of Longman and Deacon then, I can tell you. We fought them off and we didn’t take any prisoners to question this time, but I think they were Lions. There were six of them and they all looked to me like Venetians or Turks. Unfortunately,” he added, “we only killed three. The rest ran away.”

  “And then?” Ryder asked.

  “We found another ship as fast as possible. It was bound for Marseilles. Well, France was on the way to England, so to speak. I decided that we would cross France overland and get a ship to England maybe from Calais. It saved trying to get a passage out round Spain. You may not know about this,” he explained, “but the Atlantic tides pour into the Mediterranean and one needs not only a favorable wind to get out against it, but a strong wind, as well. Sometimes ships have to wait weeks for the right conditions. It’s such a waste of time. Marseilles would do very well, I thought.

  “I had no idea, of course, that France was on the edge of a civil war. I’d got out-of-date with the news, what with all my wanderings round the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean.

  “We reached Marseilles and the moment we landed, Deacon said to me that he was sure he’d recognized a man on the quay as one of those who had attacked us in Rome. He said you tend to remember a face when the last time you saw its owner, he was trying to stick a sword into you.”

  It was probably Master Jenkinson’s airy, almost amused tone that accounted for the strangled voice in which Brockley said: “Quite so.”

  “There were a couple of fast vessels in port,” Jenkinson said. “Someone could have got to Marseilles ahead of us, once they learned which ship we were on and where it was bound. I fancy we were chased all the way from Istanbul. We were three days changing vessels at Athens. Our pursuers could have caught up with us easily enough.

  “Well, we got off that quay as quick as we could, and put up at an inn. The three of us shared a room and slept with our swords beside us, which was just as well because that night two men crept into the room with daggers.

  “Luckily, I’m a light sleeper and I woke up in time and so did my companions. We made a quick job of things and there wasn’t much noise. It was all very awkward, though, because it meant we had two corpses on our hands.”

  “Yes. That would be very awkward indeed,” Ryder agreed, with a straight face. Even Charpentier was now staring at Jenkinson with the bemused expression of a child being shown around a menagerie of exotic animals.

  “But this time,” Jenkinson said, “once again, I got some information out of one of them before I dispatched him to his maker. Or rather, he spat it at me. He said I need not think that he and his companion were all I had to worry about. There were others, he said, and more still following.

  “I knew there was at least one other—three got away in Rome. But this sounded as though we still had quite a pack on our heels. It worried me. I thought,” said Master Jenkinson, “that our trail would be all too obvious if we were kept in Marseilles to answer questions in an inquiry about the said corpses. We had to do something.”

  “Such as?” Charpentier inquired.

  “Escape, of course,” said Master Jenkinson, like a tutor deploring a pupil’s inability to perform simple addition. Two and two make four, boy, not five. And if you’re staying at an inn and you happen to have killed a couple of midnight intruders and don’t want to answer questions, you flit by moonlight, fast and quietly. What else?

  “We got dressed,” continued Jenkinson. “We put the bodies in our bed—it was big; we’d all been sharing it—and on a table we left enough money to pay for our night’s lodging. Then we took our packs and climbed out of a window and slithered down a most useful vine on the wall. We hid in the town until daybreak, and then we hired horses and got out of Marseilles. We soon found that we were in a very disturbed country. Maybe that’s why there was no hue and cry after us, or not one that ever caught up with us, anyway.”

  “And since then?” inquired Ryder.

  “Since then, we’ve been traveling through France but on a wandering path and not just because of the war. We wanted to confuse our trail. But we didn’t confuse it quite enough because a couple of Lions caught up with us last night. I recognized the older one. His name is Silvius Portinari. He’s a well-known Venetian merchant, dealing mainly in Persian carpets, and I’m frankly surprised to find him pursuing me in person. I think the other was the third man who got away from us in Rome—he’s Turkish by the look of him.”

  “Well, they’re dead. They can’t harm anyone now,” said Brockley.

  Jenkinson glanced at him. “The fellow in Marseilles spoke of others following and my captive on the Caspian Sea told me—albeit reluctantly—something of how the Lions work. The wealthy merchants who are the Levantine Lions all have a few willing cutthroats in their employ, to send o
ut after nuisances like me. I would guess that Portinari came along to point me out to them because he knows me by sight, just as I knew him. He wouldn’t have intended to help personally with murdering me. He probably came last night because I and my men had wiped out all but one of his killers and he didn’t think one was enough on his own and didn’t want to wait for reinforcements either, in case I gave him the slip. But I think the reinforcements are on their way.

  “I am known as a formidable man.” Jenkinson said this without conceit, as though remarking that he was known to like quinces or to perform competently on the spinet. It was to him a fact, no more. “A second wave is very likely following, to make sure of me, in case I dealt with the first wave—as I did. I daresay they needed time to assemble the extra men. With luck,” he added, with that so-engaging grin, “I have drawn the pursuit away from the merchant train I sent through Russia. It may not have occurred to them that there is a second copy of the treaty, and they would want my blood, anyway. I’m the offender who arranged the treaty in the first place. But I am determined to survive and hand my copy of that treaty to Her Majesty in person.”

  I believed him.

  Charpentier scratched his head and still seemed only half convinced. But when he had the Dodds and Searle fetched upstairs, their outrage at the suggestion that they might have fired the inn was almost enough on its own to persuade him that they spoke the truth and that Jenkinson’s explanation was the right one. Dick Dodd had a cut on his left forearm with a length of torn shirt wrapped around it. Jenkinson produced salves and bandages from his luggage and I dressed the wound. While I worked, Dick Dodd expressed his opinion of the arson accusation in language so forceful that I was obliged to tell Charpentier that I couldn’t translate it literally. “But he doesn’t usually swear like that,” I said.

  In addition, Jenkinson was apparently carrying a fair amount of money and was willing to pay the innkeeper substantial compensation then and there, including a sum for the burial of the two bodies that still adorned the cobbles in the stableyard.

  Money, it is said, can talk. It certainly talked to Charpentier, who looked at the gold coins Jenkinson was offering, and yielded after only the briefest attempt at haggling. Jenkinson good-humoredly increased his bribe by a modest amount and Charpentier agreed to accept that the fire had probably been raised by Jenkinson’s enemies and not by my men or by Huguenots, and to let us all go. Though I think most of St. Marc’s believed it was Huguenots and probably they still do.

  I saw, afterward, what had happened to the Lutheran families who lived nearby. It was when we had at last finished at the inn, and were all going back to the abbey: myself, Ryder, Brockley, the Dodds, Searle, the abbey retainers, and also Jenkinson and his men. Charpentier was closing his inn for the time being and all the other guests had gone already.

  As we walked back across the square, we passed the houses where the Huguenots had lived. They were adjacent to each other. Their doors were half off their hinges, their windows smashed, and they were being looted. A pair of laughing youths were carrying a carved cupboard out of one and some women—respectable-seeming women—were bringing out rugs and cooking pots from the others.

  Much to my annoyance, the two scruffy retainers from the abbey dashed into one of the houses. We walked on but presently they caught us up, grinning, and informed us that they’d found a sliding panel upstairs, which everyone else had missed, and look what they’d got—a rope of pearls in a little velvet bag, and a pearl and garnet pendant in a pretty sandalwood box. It looked as though they had some experience of looting. They were obviously better at it than the townsfolk were.

  I ordered them to put the things back but they ignored me, and when Ryder and Jenkinson added their voices to mine, one of them, a particularly unpleasant type with a three-day stubble, merely retorted: “Why? Them as owned them don’t need them now.”

  It was true. The rightful owners would never need their belongings again. Their bodies hung in a row from their own upper windows, the ropes knotted around the mullions. I had hurried past, trying not to look but I had already seen more than I wanted to see.

  There were children among them.

  I could only thank heaven that Meg was safe in England.

  10

  Stained Glass

  At the abbey, we found Dale in a state of great anxiety, although Walter Dodd had run on ahead to announce our safe return. She was waiting on the porch and rushed at me and Brockley, ricocheting between us as though she hardly knew which one she had worried about most.

  “Oh, ma’am, thank God you’re all right. Roger, what happened? Oh, my God, you’re all over soot! We saw the flames going up, right from the windows here, and then Master Ryder came out and shouted up to us that he was going to find out what was going on . . . and then he went and didn’t come back either . . .”

  “Madame Blanchard! We are all most relieved and we will give thanks for your safety.” The abbess appeared, black-gowned and calm. She was a tall woman, probably in her forties, with one of those brown southern European faces that look as though they have been carved from teak. She had a beautiful smile when she did smile, but it wasn’t often.

  Helene reverenced her, but I found her unnerving. It was Ryder, not I, who said to her candidly: “A Huguenot family has been massacred and the two abbey retainers who were with me looted their house. I doubt if they’re the type you require to serve an abbey.”

  The two concerned had already taken themselves off to their quarters. The abbess did not, however, pretend she didn’t know who was meant. She inclined her head politely toward Ryder. “I know their shortcomings. I do not approve the Lutheran faith but I do not condone either murder or looting. In these difficult days, I employ what men I can find but I agree that the two of whom you speak are deadwood and I shall soon, I trust, cut them away. I have three others but last night I kept them back to defend the abbey and my nuns, if the fire should mean a Huguenot attack.” She glanced around, hearing footsteps. “Here is Helene.”

  Helene hurried to meet me, with Jeanne behind her.

  “I am so glad that you are safe, madame.” She bobbed me a conventional curtsy.

  “We will send word to Douceaix,” the abbess said. “Rumors fly fast these days and we must make sure that your relatives know, as soon as possible, that you have come to no harm. A messenger will leave at once.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Helene, I will come to you and tell you all about it very soon. For the moment, if you will excuse me, I wish to go to my chamber and tidy myself.”

  “Of course. Come, child.” The abbess led Helene and Jeanne away. I made haste to my room with Dale, telling Brockley to wash and change quickly and then join us.

  While we waited for him, I, too, seized the chance to wash and Dale helped me into the one spare gown I had brought with me to St. Marc. “Did you see your husband, ma’am?” she asked as she got it out of the press where she had hung it.

  “Yes, and spent the night with him—until the fire started! But he’s gone again now.” I told her the whole story, briefly, while she buttoned me into my sleeves and did my hair, making horrified exclamations at intervals during my story. Presently, Brockley arrived, pale from his night’s exertions, but clean and tidy once again. We sat down together. The guest quarters of the abbey were plain, in the sense that they had no wall hangings or carpets, but they were quite adequately furnished. My room had a tester bed for me, a truckle bed for Dale, a settle-cum-chest, and a window seat. I was sitting on my bed. Dale had the chest and Brockley perched sideways on the window seat.

  They gazed at me and I said furiously: “I am so angry that I could burst. I’ve been used in the most shameful way! And now I don’t know what to do!”

  “Madam, what are you talking about?” Brockley asked.

  “I mean that Cecil planted three men on me with orders to see if Matthew contacted me and arrest him if he did—in his own country. Master Blanchard’s men also seem to be involved. Searle
is one of them, and he was with the Dodds when they followed me to the inn last night. I daresay that Master Blanchard is perfectly well aware of the whole scheme and probably cooperated with it.”

  They burst into exclamations of consternation and outrage on my behalf, which were comforting to hear.

  “I suspect,” I said, “that Master Blanchard even pretended to be ill so as to keep me not too far away from the Loire for a while! So do I now go on and help him bring Helene back to England, or do I simply refuse to go a step farther with him?”

  “But, ma’am,” said Dale anxiously, “what about Paris and the queen’s letter?”

  “I can go to Paris without either Master Blanchard or Helene,” I said. “Brockley has already said so much.”

  “Mistress Helene is quite innocent in all this.” Brockley, after his first outburst, had begun to think. His gold-freckled brow was creased with thought. “Even Master Blanchard probably had little choice. I have no wish to defend him, but that’s very likely true.”

  I sighed. “Yes, it is. I know myself that it is very difficult to say a blunt no to Cecil. And why should he, anyway? Gerald’s father has never liked me. The scheme failed, at least. Matthew escaped—again! I suppose it would be best to go on and finish my errands.”

  “Madam—I don’t mean to be inquisitive—but when you parted from Master de la Roche, did you make any arrangements to meet again?” Brockley inquired.