That she could raise his spirits even in their current circumstances disturbed him.
He lifted the heavy, elaborate gold collar over his head, a literal reminder of the weight of his office, and unclasped his fine wool cloak, hanging both over a chair near the fire. Then he sat down and pulled off his boots, neatly standing them beneath the chair before tugging at the laces of his doublet.
He knew the King’s intimates would sneer at the careful way he treated his clothes, but the memory of a hungry belly and a thin cloak were too fresh in his mind.
He took nothing for granted.
Perhaps that was why the King trusted him.
He heard Susanna rise from the bath with a cascade of water, and dry herself, then saw the tips of her fingers above the screen as she pulled her shift over her head.
She looked hollow-eyed when she stepped into view. She didn’t speak, just staggered to the bed and crawled beneath the covers.
She murmured something as her eyes closed.
“Pardon?” Parker took a step toward her, leaning down to hear her better.
“Thank you,” she muttered, her voice a hoarse whisper, and then, curled up like a babe, she fell asleep.
Parker eyed the bed he’d been looking forward to since waiting on the docks for her with regret. Only one small corner of it was occupied by Susanna Horenbout, but she might as well have been spread-eagled across it.
He took the pallet the surprised innkeeper had provided and tossed it down before the door.
This wasn’t the first time he’d guarded a doorway, and since someone thought Susanna’s secret was worth killing for, it was unlikely to be the last.
Somehow, as he heard a faint sigh come from the bed, that thought was not as irritating as it should have been.
Susanna woke with the uncomfortable feeling of being watched. She snapped open her eyes and was ensnared in the silver-blue of her guardian devil’s gaze.
“You have good instincts,” he said.
She shrugged and snuggled deeper into the covers. She could say she was an artist, sensitive to atmosphere, but in truth, at home she was watched all the time, and her instincts were finely honed.
He was as disheveled as she must be, blue-black stubble darkening his jaw, his unfashionably short hair standing every which way. He wore only his fine linen shirt, the drawstring loose at the neck, and his breeches.
His feet were bare, and unable to help herself, she leaned over the edge of the bed and stared down at them.
He wiggled his toes. “Never seen a man’s feet before?”
She ignored him, not caring about propriety. His feet were magnificent. She must …
She struggled up, swung down her legs, and reached under the bed for her satchel, wincing as her feet met the cold stone floor. She quickly pulled them back up and took paper and a piece of charcoal, as well as her pressing board, from the bag.
“What are you doing?” Parker asked, bemused and suspicious.
“Shh.”
She hated people talking to her while she worked. She needed a quiet, focused mind.
She began to draw, her first strokes, as always, a sensual delight, full of possibilities. She made them with a flourish, then settled down to the real work. Parker began to move away and she gave a shout, her left hand shooting out to grab his shirt and keep him in place while her right carried on, the charcoal vibrating and twisting between her fingers with a life of its own.
“This floor is freezing, mistress, and if you think I’m going to stand here while you draw my feet …”
She let go of his shirt and leaned back, studying the results with the hypercritical eye her father had coached her to use. She’d drawn just his toes and about half of his foot.
She gave a nod. It wasn’t bad.
She felt the paper being pried from her fingers, and resisted in surprise for a moment before letting go. She saw Parker’s eyes widen, and then his startled expression as he jerked his gaze from the drawing to her face.
“That took you less than five minutes.”
“It’s just a simple sketch.”
But it wasn’t, and she knew it. When she had to draw, no matter the situation, no matter the time, then the result was very seldom a simple sketch.
Albrecht Dürer himself had bought a plätlein of the Savior from her, exclaiming that he never thought a girl could accomplish so much.
The sting of that backhanded compliment was less, coming as it did from one of the world’s finest artists. Also because he’d thought her work good enough to pay money for. There was no greater artistic compliment than that.
“You really can draw.”
Parker looked so astonished, she laughed.
“My father would not have sent me to represent his atelier unless I was the very best he had available.”
His eyes narrowed. “He is taking a risk, though. Sending you.” He looked her up and down, and there was no mistaking he liked what he saw. “England is not used to women artists, and a beautiful woman on her own anywhere is unsafe, no matter what her skills.”
“All things my father considered and agonized over, I can assure you.”
Parker raised an eyebrow. “Then why?”
Susanna looked at him for a long moment, at the way his thick, dark lashes framed his eyes, the hardness and the pureness shining out of him. She swallowed. “It was a case of better the devil he didn’t know. If I had stayed in Ghent, my father knew it was only a matter of time before I seduced his blacksmith.”
Susanna Horenbout knew how to surprise a man. Parker studied her profile as she sat primly on the cart his horse kept pace with.
She was exotic in every way—from her accent, to the cut of her dress and the hood that framed hair like honeyed wine, to the way she could craft a masterpiece in a moment, of his feet, no less.
Parker had never met her like before.
And a bolt aimed at her back had nearly met its mark yesterday.
Parker concentrated again on the road ahead, on identifying the places most likely to be used for ambush. They were exposed, riding with only the King’s colors and Parker’s sword for protection—more than enough, under normal circumstances, but nothing about this was normal.
He could have waited to send word for guards from London, but in the time it would take for the message to reach court, and the men he needed dispatched, they could have ridden to London and back twice.
With any luck, they had left the assassin from last night behind them. It would be courting danger to remain in either Deal or Dover.
Parker felt a quick, hot anger for Harvey, the man who had died in Susanna’s arms. He hadn’t known the man well, but Harvey had had no need to spy for the King. He was a genuine merchant conducting a profitable business with the Netherlands and France.
Had Harvey realized how deep a game he’d been playing? Or was there some other reason he would risk his life to pass on information?
He wanted to ask Susanna again if she would tell him Harvey’s secret. But Simon, the cart driver who’d accompanied him to the docks, sat right beside her, tight-faced with the effort of forcing his team to do double time over bad roads pitted by the rains.
At least it wasn’t raining now, although the heavy, dark skies promised to change that at any moment.
Parker glanced at the back of the cart to make sure the canvas protecting his Italian crossbows was in place. The inlay in their gleaming wood stocks was a thing of beauty, and he wanted them in perfect condition when they reached the King.
A short distance ahead the road disappeared into a thick wood, and Parker surged forward, giving Gawain his head.
“Problem?” Simon called.
“Just making sure,” Parker called back, flicking his cloak back from his scabbard for easy access to his sword.
As he thundered toward the wood, it was Gawain who saved him.
The massive charger gave a little jump that braked their advance. They skidded through the wet leaves just as the
y came under the first trees, and the arrow missed Parker by a hair.
He felt the brush of the feathered end on his cheek as it shot past, and an involuntary shout tore from his throat.
He hauled Gawain up on his back legs, forelegs windmilling, and urged him around as fast as he could. Two arrows flew just above him.
“Attack!” As he charged back along the path he saw Simon turn the cart sharp left off the road, urging the horses over the stony ground.
Simon suddenly hauled back on the reins, and Parker saw another archer rise from behind a large bush in front of the cart, his arrow lit.
Parker swore, and dug desperate heels into Gawain’s sides, racing back to the cart as Simon fought to bring it to a halt.
The archer in the field took deliberate aim at the horses. The burning arrow arched between them and they went wild, leaping to the side with screams of fear. The cart slid on the mud-slicked ground, pivoted so it stood at an angle to the woods.
Simon scrambled down to uncouple the horses before they broke a leg or pulled the cart over, and Parker reached them just as Susanna took cover behind the cart. He leaped down from Gawain and slapped his hindquarters to keep the stallion going, following the cart horses into the open field next to the wood.
“How many?” Simon threw himself on the ground beside Parker, and Parker’s estimation of him soared even higher. The cartman was on edge but cool, his voice and his hands steady.
“Not sure. At least two longbows in the woods besides the one in the field.” Quiet had descended for a moment, and Parker watched the woods from under the cart.
Simon touched his arm and held up a knife with a sharp blade and a battered hilt, then jerked his head in the direction of the trees.
“You want to attack longbowmen with a knife across open ground?” Parker shook his head in disbelief as a fresh volley of arrows struck the cart.
“We must do something.” Susanna Horenbout’s voice was as steady as Simon’s as she wriggled beneath the cart beside him.
Parker felt the heat of her pressed against his side. “We have but two knives and a sword. Unless you have any weapons hidden beneath your gown?”
“Is a crossbow easy to use?” Susanna asked.
“That is the beauty of them. Anyone can learn to use a crossbow. The drawback is in the time it takes to reload. A longbowman can loose two arrows to every bolt.” Parker kept his focus on the trees. “It doesn’t shoot as far as a longbow, either, but you can load it ahead of time, then shoot when you need to.”
“So”—as Susanna spoke, two more arrows arced from the trees and thumped into the cart—“if you had a great many crossbows, you could load them in advance? Lie under this cart and shoot them off one by one?”
“You could indeed.” Parker had never felt more stupid in his life. Even now, he almost balked at using the beauties. They were the property of the King—but what was this but the King’s business?
“What?” Simon frowned at him.
Parker’s voice was dry. “Mistress Horenbout has quite correctly reminded me that we have thirty Italian crossbows in the cart above us, with bolts.”
Simon let out a whoop of laughter, and thumped the ground with his fist.
3
The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier: Not to hasarde himself in forraginge and spoiling or in enterprises of great daunger and small estimation, though he be sure to gaine by it.
Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman: To be good and discreete.
The archer in the field fired his second burning arrow, aiming it low. Susanna fumbled the bolt in her hands as she looked back and saw smoke rising from its burning tip, fifty feet behind them in the long grass.
When she turned back, the other archers were stepping out of the woods, and she saw with a leap of panic that their arrows were lit as well. They intended to burn the cart and those under it, or shoot them as they tried to run to safety.
She caught hold of herself, rammed the bolt into place, and turned the cranequin as hard as she could.
Parker lay still beside her, his shoulders and arms bunched, his eyes intent on his prey. Susanna was fascinated by his finger, the way it caressed the trigger; with a minute, incremental tightening until, with a rush of air and a recoil that made her jerk, he loosed his bolt.
The archer on the right fell screaming to the ground, the bolt in his shoulder. He began crawling like a pitiful caterpillar back toward the cover of the woods.
The other man turned tail and ran after him, loosing his burning arrow, which landed in an uncooperative, wet field to the left of the cart.
He stumbled just before the trees, and Susanna saw the bloom of blood on his dark green doublet as he fell face-first into the loamy soil at the edge of the wood.
“Could there be more of them?” Simon asked, his crossbow held loosely in his grip, and she realized the third archer was down.
Parker grunted, noncommittal, but Susanna noticed his hands were relaxed on his bow.
Rather than look at the fallen men while they waited to be sure, she watched the misfired arrow burn down its length. It petered out in a desultory trail of smoke, leaving an unpleasant smell of burned tar and feathers drifting in the air.
She didn’t want to look at the bodies.
Her passage from Ghent was marked by a trail of blood.
“There is no one else. Or they have made off.” Parker stood, still keeping the cart between himself and the woods. Only when the birds began calling in the trees again did he move around it.
“Get the horses,” he told Simon. Then he walked, unhurried, toward the men he’d brought down.
Simon watched him a moment, then walked away to the field where the horses stood grazing and whistled to them.
Parker was crouched beside the first man he’d hit. Steeling herself, Susanna walked across the field to join them.
“Who sent you?” Parker loomed over the archer.
“I do not know who …” The man choked, then turned his head to retch in the grass.
“Of course you do,” Parker said, his tone friendly. He reached forward and grasped the end of the bolt that protruded from the man’s shoulder, gave it a small twist.
The archer’s shriek cut through the air, causing crows to lift from the trees squawking, and Susanna’s heart to stop.
“No.” The man’s voice was a quiet sob when he could speak again. “No.”
“Yes and yes.” Parker reached out again, and it was on Susanna’s lips to scream “No!,” to leap forward and stay his hand.
“One thing! I know one thing.” The archer shivered uncontrollably.
Parker said nothing, his fingers a mere whisper from the bolt.
“His face was … cloaked. But his hands. Saw his hands as he gave over the coin.” The archer’s breath was labored and he closed his eyes a moment.
Parker’s fingers twitched.
“They were the hands of an old man. Not a laborer—they weren’t callused.” The archer choked again. “That is all I know.”
Parker leaned in closer. “How were you to let him know the job was done?”
The archer coughed, a rattling sound that made Susanna’s stomach heave. “Said … his master would know. When you did or did not return to court.”
Parker stood, impatience in every line of him, his eyes on Simon hooking the horses back into their harness.
Susanna stepped away from the archer, unsure what to do. Her gaze fell on the body of the other man and she jerked it away, shivering. He lay with his face in the wet earth, his hand outstretched, his bow flung from him.
Parker bent and gathered up the archer’s bow and arrows, and raised an eyebrow at Susanna’s gasp of shock.
“You’d rather I leave them here for some brigand to take and use against the innocent?” He stepped away, and gathered the bows of the other two men.
Susanna shook her head. She hadn’t thought of that. “What will we do about him?” She gestured
to the wounded archer. He lay still, eyes closed.
Parker looked across at him, then walked back toward the cart, and Susanna trailed him reluctantly.
“Sir! What will we do?”
“He tried to kill us. Why should we do anything?”
Susanna stopped and half-turned back to where the man lay. She bit her lip as one of the crows hopped toward him, almost close enough to peck. She wrung her hands and met Parker’s steady gaze.
“Please. Let us take him in the cart.”
“We could repack the crossbows,” Simon said from behind Parker. “Make room for him in the back.”
Parker turned to look at his driver, and Susanna could see veiled amusement in Simon’s expression.
“Very well.” He flicked back the canvas, and his hand rested reverently on the polished crossbows beneath it. “If only because it will be interesting to see who at court tries to kill him when they realize who he is.”
London was a cesspit of mud and filth.
The hard rain stabbed cold needles into her shoulders and head, and a sour, putrid smell reached out at them from every alley they passed.
“Not long now,” Simon told her, and Susanna nodded, hunching as deep into her cloak as she could. Not that it made a difference; she was wet through.
She had never felt so strange. Out of sorts, exhausted, and distant from herself. The comforts and routine of Ghent were far behind.
She looked across at Parker, who must be exhausted himself—he’d been tense and alert since the attack yesterday morning. He hadn’t relaxed his posture for a moment, not even last night in the inn where they had snatched a few hours of sleep.
Now that they were in London, he was stiffer still.
Somewhere in the King’s palace sat a spider in his web, watching and waiting to see if his prey had escaped his trap.
Susanna wondered what Parker was going to do about that, but she was too miserable and cold to think it through herself. She was on foreign soil, and he would know far better than she the best way to flush out a traitor.
Part of his plan lay shivering under the canvas at the back of the cart. Parker had insisted they not pull the bolt out of the archer’s shoulder until they had a physician to hand; the man would bleed to death otherwise. And he wanted to keep the man alive so he could watch who sought him out at court. Or tried to kill him.
In a Treacherous Court Page 2