by Barbara Kyle
Her voice became low, intimate, confiding. The voice of a wife. “It has troubled me, Adam, knowing this vileness about your family. I must confess that the decision to keep it secret was difficult, since it is my duty as a Christian to decry heresy. But I did keep it to myself, for your sake. It has troubled me more since I became sworn, by our betrothal, to join your family. But I take my vow to God as sacred, not to be broken because the time is inconvenient. I charge the same of you. As part of your family, I will do my duty to keep this secret still. But if you break faith with me, and with God, by breaking your vow, then I can no longer deny my greater duty.”
She poured him more wine, refilling his goblet. “I would like our wedding to take place in three weeks, on the feast of St. John. It will be a private ceremony, known only to us until I can safely tell John. I trust that date will be convenient for you.” She smiled at him. “Midsummer Day. Just think, all the flowers will be in bloom.”
Adam hardly knew how he covered the twenty-three miles to Drayton after he left Frances. His fury at her was so violent it seemed to haze his vision, and the fields and people and houses passed him like ships in fog. More than once he was on the verge of galloping back and telling her that she could take herself, and her malicious threat with her, to the gates of hell. But each time he was about to turn his horse, he thought of his stepmother, and the hard facts pounded, over and over, like a catechism drilled into him—can’t let them seize her, I had to agree, there is no choice—and he pressed on. One ray glimmered through the fog, and in his mind he steered for it. If they could overthrow the Queen, and if Elizabeth took the throne, Frances’s menace would evaporate, because Elizabeth would never allow his stepmother to be harmed. And if we can do it before Midsummer Day…
So many ifs.
He jerked the reins to halt his horse. He had reached Drayton and the main street ahead was clogged with people. They all seemed to be thronging the market square. He cursed under his breath. It was getting near dusk and he could not afford this delay. He was to join his father and uncle and Lord Powys’s men at the mine two miles past this town. They had crisscrossed the county, gathering stockpiles of weapons.
He nudged his way past people, moving into the thick of the crowd where he sensed anger in the air. There were sullen faces, and the chatter was the grumbling resentment of a mob. He asked a wiry man on foot what was going on.
“The baron’s men, sir, arresting the miller. Possession of seditious pamphlets.”
Adam raised himself in his stirrups to get a better look. The crowd had converged on the market cross, where armed men in Grenville’s green and yellow livery sat on horseback. Near them stood several town officials in rich robes, a couple with their chains of office askew on their chests, as if thrown on in haste. They glared at the victim, whose hands were being tied behind his back. His hair and clothes were faintly dusted with flour. The miller. Sitting on horseback beside the officials was a man expensively dressed in fur-trimmed green velvet, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his very fine sword. Some local lord, Adam reckoned, maybe kinsman to Grenville. And no weakling, if his imposing bulk and severe expression and sharp eyes were any guide. It made Adam all the more impatient to move on. His father was organizing secretly under the aegis of Lord Powys, but the preeminent authority in the county, and the district’s principal lord, was Baron Grenville. This town was completely under his influence. The tyranny of this spectacle sickened Adam. The poor, wretched miller would hang. “All for a scrap of paper,” he muttered.
“A potent scrap, sir,” said the man. “It calls the Queen ‘Bloody Mary’ and worse.”
Adam wished he’d kept quiet. Any insult against the Queen was considered a criminal act.
The man spat in the dirt to show his disgust. “Bloody Mary, indeed. Light words, if you ask me, for one who’s burned hundreds of folk. If she fought the French with the fury she shows her own people, we wouldn’t be losing this war.”
Adam relaxed. The fellow was no supporter of the Queen. “I’d say we’ve already lost it.”
“Aye, when she lost Calais, she lost all. And England’s dignity with it.”
Adam couldn’t help admiring the man’s grit. All the laws in the world wouldn’t silence an irate Englishman. He was about to ask if there was another way through town, when he saw, a few house-lengths ahead, his father and uncle on horseback. They were at the head of a train of three wagons, with Powys’s mounted retainers surrounding the vehicles. Adam’s heart thumped in his chest. His father’s party, trying to pass through, was hemmed inside the throng just as he was, and they were dangerously close to the town officials. If anyone got a glimpse of what was under the wagons’ canvas tarps, they would all hang.
He pressed his horse forward. The people suddenly moved closer to the market cross like a tide rushing out, leaving his father’s party marooned, alone but for some stragglers. It allowed Adam to trot his horse over to them, and as he reached them he heard his father say in a fierce whisper, “I won’t stand by and let them string him up. Let me go.”
Geoffrey had gripped his wrist to restrain him, and spoke in the same forced undertone, “Not here, Richard.”
Adam reached them. “What’s happening?”
“Thank God you’re here, Adam. Your father wants to protest. Wants to barge over there and confront the mayor. It’s madness.”
“It’s only right! Thomas the miller has been with us from the start. If we don’t stand up for him, what the hell are we doing this for?”
“Sir,” Adam said, “my uncle is right. This is not the place.”
“I know, I know, I must content myself,” he growled. “Let go, Geoffrey, I’ll be still.” He looked back at the miller being led away. “It’s just so damn wrong.”
“That’s why we’re going to make things right.”
He nodded. “It’s good to see you, Adam.”
“Look.” Geoffrey jerked his chin to indicate the hard-faced lord in green velvet. He was looking in their direction, scowling, and began to trot his horse toward them.
“Christ,” Adam’s father muttered.
“Richard,” Geoffrey warned in a whisper, “hold your tongue.”
“What’s going on here?” the lord demanded as he reached them.
Adam said, “Good day, my lord. We’re passing through with some loads of household furnishings. My father is anxious to get along before dark.”
The man looked back at the wagons. At the seven grim-faced retainers. Adam held his breath.
His father said genially, “My wife will have my guts for garters if I break any of her mirrors or crockery. Sorry for the commotion, my lord. We’ll be on our way.” He signaled the carters driving the wagons, and Powys’s men. The wagons rumbled forward. Adam, riding with his father and uncle, didn’t look back, though he felt the eyes of the lord on them all.
Two miles later, the buildings of the mine came into view across the heath. When they arrived, there was still enough daylight as they dismounted in the tangled grass and the wagons clattered up. Adam and his father and uncle helped the men throw off the tarps and carry the heavy boxes inside. The rough building was caked inside with windblown grit from the cave mouth that yawned beside them, and they kicked up a lot of dust as they worked. Adam was glad of the loyalty of Lord Powys’s men. Powys was not the most powerful lord in the county, but he was the richest—so wealthy he could stand a small army—and his early involvement in the cause was what gave Adam hope of success, despite the dangers. Sir William Cecil had brought his father and Powys together. Powys was committed, but did not dare stockpile the weapons at his home, so Adam’s father had volunteered to take them. Years ago he had bought this piece of property for its lead mine, but because of his lack of capital had been unable to operate it. Sitting idle, it offered an ideal hiding place.
Adam finally had a chance to report to him. They had to raise their voices above the noise of the men trudging in with the boxes, coughing from the dust as they
thudded down their loads and shoved them in place. Geoffrey passed out wineskins of beer as the men worked, to mitigate the dust.
“First,” Adam told his father, “Grenville will not return home for at least two months.”
“She told you that?”
“Yes. He wrote to her.”
Geoffrey said with a wink as he passed a wineskin to him, “Handy having the lady in love with you.”
Adam downed several mouthfuls of beer, his rage at the woman matched only by the desire to keep secret his unholy bargain with her. There was nothing his family could do to help him. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and handed the wineskin on to his father. “He asked the Queen for six thousand more troops to quell the Irish, and got them.”
“Good. The more there, the less here. What’s the situation abroad?”
“In France, Sir Henry Dudley is with us. He has the silver, and will sail the moment we send word. And Throckmorton will raise two hundred men.” After Dudley’s failed rebellion, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton had fled to Paris. Adam went on to report on some of the other exiles. There were hundreds of men, many of wealth and power, like Lord Bedford, who would stand with them, too.
His father clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Good work. Can you ride to London and tell Cecil?”
“For God’s sake, Richard,” Geoffrey said, “let him snatch a bite of bread and a few winks. Look at him—he’s a wreck. He’d fall asleep in the saddle.”
His father smiled. “Aye. Rest tonight with us, Adam. We’re bound for the Hart’s Horn Inn.”
Adam was aware of a sudden silence. The men had stopped working. He turned to see a figure standing in the doorway. The hard-faced lord in green velvet.
“Household furnishings for a mine?” the man said, looking at them with unmasked suspicion.
Adam’s eyes flicked to his father, who said, “A stopover, my lord. I own this property.”
“Unusual warehouse.”
“You take a lively interest in my trade, sir. May I know your name?”
“You may not.”
Adam’s hand slipped to his dagger handle. He saw Geoffrey move slowly to the door to block the man’s retreat.
The man caught both movements and brought his own hand to the hilt of his sword. “I am not alone,” he warned calmly. “Come for me, and ten men who ride with me will cut you down.”
Adam could feel the tension in Powys’s men. They stood expectant, uncertain.
“Trade, eh?” The man looked down at a box near him whose lid had come ajar. He kicked the lid off, revealing the contents. “Are guns your stock in trade?” He added, very quietly, “You could hang for this.”
Adam swallowed. Every box held the evidence. Arquebuses, pistols, swords, pikes, armor, crossbows, and hundreds of arrows.
“My respects, sir,” his father said, bowing. “It’s clear you are a gentleman of high standing and no doubt proud to do service to Her Majesty the Queen. Do you find yourself quite satisfied with the state of the realm?”
The man looked flummoxed. “What?”
The hair stood up on Adam’s neck. His father had decided to take a gamble.
“Happy that the price of everything has doubled in the last few years? Happy with our success in the war with France?”
“Success? You’re either brainsick or incompetent at your underground trade. England’s beaten.”
“Then perhaps it is the burnings that please you? The hundreds of so-called heretics who suffer in the flames, a number unheard of in the days of old King Henry. Or perhaps it’s the sight of poor men arrested, to swing by their necks just for reading a pamphlet.”
“I like none of these things. Is that the appropriate reply?”
Adam wasn’t sure what to make of him.
The man gave a wolfish smile. “Is your name Thornleigh?”
Geoffrey took an audible breath of surprise. The man noted it. “I’m on my way to the Hart’s Horn Inn. I’ve been sent by my cousin, Lord Powys. To meet you.” He grinned. “The name’s Palmer. Sir Arthur Palmer. I have an armory you’ll want to see.”
28
Midsummer Day
June 1558
Adam threw himself into the work of treason, spending every day in the saddle, and many nights, too. So many prominent men had secretly joined the cause, he was riding to all corners of the county, arranging the stockpiling of weapons and coordinating the communications between gentlemen with armories. The most recent recruit was Sir John Thynne of Longleat, the richest landholder in Wiltshire; the most exhilarating, the officers of the northern garrison of Berwick-upon-Tweed who were tacitly waiting to throw their support to the rebels. Many of the foremost men were friends of Elizabeth, but for her safety they kept their preparations secret from her—if all failed, the treason would be theirs, not hers.
Adam rode from village to town, and manor to manor, constantly hoping that the call would come, the attack would begin, and the Queen would be routed—all before Midsummer Day. But as he sat in on strategy meetings, his frustration became excruciating. There was no finalized plan. Though men throughout the length and breadth of England stood ready and willing to fight, they lacked a central leader, a figure to rally them. And so, no call had come when the morning dawned of the longest day of the year, high midsummer, when the country basked in the lengthened hours of sunlight.
To Adam, it was the darkest day of his life.
“Going to church, sir?”
Having just come down from his room at the inn, Adam was startled by the landlord’s question. The wedding was secret—how could the man know? Frances had arranged the thing, summoning him to this isolated village, and he had arrived after a late-night ride down from Cambridge. She would be there already, in the parish church down the street, preparing and primping.
The landlord was patiently awaiting a reply. “Most folks like to go before they break their fast, is all.”
The feast of St. John, Adam realized. If only his visit to the church could be about just that—mumble a prayer or two, then go on about his business, a free man. If he could say a prayer and have Frances miraculously disappear from his life he would be on his knees, prostrate before the altar. But he had never believed in miracles. He was coldly resigned, telling himself he was hardly the first man to make a loveless marriage. Fellows did it all the time, to obey a father’s command or to move up in the world. Why should he be any different?
“Later,” he told the landlord. He ordered breakfast. He had no appetite for food, but even less for pacing in his room. It was nine o’clock. In an hour he would be standing with Frances before the priest. Until death do you part… He was distractedly tearing a piece of bread, forcing his mind onto practicalities, onto how he could continue the stockpiling operation away from Frances’s notice, when the landlord came back.
“A visitor for you, sir.”
“Visitor?”
“Your sister. She’s outside.”
His heart jumped. It could not be Isabel.
He found her at the back of the building on a grassy swath leading down to a stream, standing under a huge willow tree that rose higher than the inn. She hadn’t seen him and her back was to him as she looked at the water. She had pulled up the hood of her cloak, but he would know her anywhere, even without the telltale strands of bright hair. He was stunned to see her. Why was she here? Had she fled again? Was she in danger? Gripped by this fear, he came up behind her and blurted, “What’s happened?”
She whirled around. Her eyes blazed fury. “Treachery, that is what.”
“My God, has someone betrayed you?”
“Betrayal, indeed. Falseness. Rank unfaithfulness!” Throwing back her hood, she tugged off a necklace, the whistle he had given her dangling from it, and hurled it at him. It hit his chest and fell to the ground. “How could you?”
It staggered him. Frances. She knew.
“Yes, your sordid secret is out.” Her voice was harsh with contempt. “Your lady’s maid is a cousin of
my chamberlain’s stepdaughter. Your lady is apparently overeager, and blabbed.”
He clenched his teeth. “Do not call her my lady.”
“Oh, shall I say your sweetheart? Your dearest? Your darling? How long have you loved her?”
“Love? I hate her.”
“Ha! Is that why you’ve rushed to cobble together this furtive, backstreet wedding? You cannot wait to enjoy her!”
“Good God, if you knew the reason—”
“Oh, I dare say there’s a reason. Is it money? A baron’s sister must bring a handsome dowry. Are you building another ship and want her moneybags?”
“Money?” he shot back. “Her brother is like to cut her off, penniless.”
“How sad. Then perhaps the reason is more of the barnyard variety. Perhaps you must marry her before her belly has swollen so huge her kinsmen will hunt you down.”
“Enough!” Damn her. He could have borne the wretched wedding with some shred of dignity if only she had not come. “Why are you here?”
She gasped. “How can you ask that? How, after all we have been to each other? You dallied with me, and now you marry another woman. I am the injured party!”
“You! You don’t have to make a marriage you loathe. They wanted you to, and I was ready to take you anywhere, brave any danger, to save you from that fate. As for injury, I will bear the scar forever of the arrow I stopped for you. If you want to talk of hurt,” he said, thumping his chest, “look no farther than here.”
“Ah, yes, your past great deeds for my sake. But it seems you have tired of loyalty and faithfulness and care not who sees you for a liar, for now you have chosen another.”
“I tell you, I did not choose.”
“You are a free man!”
“As free as a prisoner in chains! Less free, because if I escape I doom a friend to death. You call that choice? The choice of the devil. And this devil is forcing me to clamp the chains on myself.”