“You do not approve of women who seek to learn to protect themselves?”
“A bow is an attacking weapon or a siege weapon. It will do you no good on the streets of London.” Parker flung a canvas sheet over the bows to shield them from dust.
“What is a good weapon on the streets of London, then?” Susanna seemed in earnest.
Parker hesitated, then dug into his boot and brought out a wicked-looking blade. “This, held ready in the palm of the hand, mostly covered by a sleeve.”
The blood drained from her face. A knife was an up-close weapon. Personal. No nice distance, like a bow.
She shook her head. “Then I’ll have to go about London unarmed.”
“It matters not.” Parker stepped forward and held out his hand to escort her from the munitions storehouse.
“Why?” She slipped her hand into his, and the way she did it, without hesitation, tightened something within him. The sharp flash of feeling made him suck in his breath.
“Because wherever you go in the streets of London, I will be just one step behind, mistress. And I have enough weapons for both of us.”
Her fingers tightened around his hand. “Surely the danger is past? The whole court must know we have seen the King, that I have conveyed whatever message I might carry.”
Parker stood close to her, unwilling to leave the dark intimacy of the storeroom and go out into the busy, snow-dirtied courtyard beyond.
“Until we know your attacker’s motives, I do not wish to take a chance.”
“What will we do?” She seemed sure he would know.
“We hide you somewhere safe, and then I watch to see who tries to kill the archer.”
“Where is he? Is he recovered?”
Parker shook his head. “The bolt has been removed. I had one of the King’s own surgeons see to it. He is in the infirmary in Blackfriars Monastery, next to the palace. The monks think he will live—if his former patron does not silence him first.”
Susanna lifted her head, her eyes suddenly wide. “You did not tell the King about the archer.”
“No, I didn’t.”
She held his gaze in that forthright way of hers. “Why not?”
“Because no one tries to kill me without my taking a very personal interest in discovering who they are.”
She watched him for a long moment. “What were you before you became the King’s man, Master Parker?”
He felt himself sink into the green-brown of her eyes, calm and serene as a wood in spring. She could see straight to his soul. He did not know whether he should rejoice at that, or despair.
He led them through the door out into the freezing rain. “I was nothing.”
Welcome to Paradise.” Parker spoke with a lift in his voice, as if the words were a private joke.
Susanna looked up at the house before her. “Very nice.” It was beautiful, but she couldn’t find the energy for enthusiasm.
Dusk was already settling, and she had yet to find a hearth to warm her feet. Parker needed to fetch his things from his palace lodgings at Westminster before taking her to his own house, which she gathered he seldom used. All his clothes were here.
“This won’t take long.” Parker opened the door with a key he’d taken from his pouch, and gave a small bow and a flourish for her to precede him.
Grateful to be out of the rain, Susanna entered a magnificent hallway. It smelled of vinegar, clean and sharp, and the richer, rounder scent of beeswax. “You are Keeper of this house for the King?”
“And two others also within the palace grounds, Purgatory and Hell. As well as the palace itself, which includes the King’s personal treasury.” Again, that ironic tone.
“You choose to keep your rooms in Paradise, though?”
He laughed. “No one has ever commented on that before. I don’t know whether to run screaming from you, Mistress Horenbout, or marry you forthwith.”
Susanna spun toward him, surprised.
He was leaning back against the door, arms crossed over his chest, watching her in a way that made the hairs on her arms prickle as they had earlier with the King.
Then he straightened and walked toward the staircase that swept upward to a large landing. “Call me superstitious, but I’d rather live in Paradise than Purgatory.”
“The King stays in these houses when he is in residence at Westminster?” She grasped the banister and hauled herself up the stairs after him.
Parker shook his head. “No. He used to use the main palace, but it caught fire a few years ago. His royal chambers were badly damaged, so he moved his official seat to Bridewell. These houses are used for his courtiers or for foreign dignitaries sometimes.” He unlocked a door off the landing near the top of the stairs and walked in. Susanna stood at the threshold, looking into his chambers.
He pulled out a small trunk and began tossing clothes into it, along with ledgers and a sword, then closed and hefted the trunk easily in his arms.
No lackeys for this man. The time needed to find servants would have considerably lengthened their journey, but some courtiers would have insisted on finding them anyway.
Parker was a man not afraid to carry his own baggage.
She smiled at him.
He froze, then shook his head as if shaking himself awake.
“I know this has been a long day.” He set the trunk down and stepped toward her, lifting a hand to her face. She saw it tremble before he ran a finger down her cheek.
His finger was so warm against her cold skin, she raised her own hand to press his more firmly in place.
His fingers tightened, sliding beneath her cap into her hair, and for a moment he cradled her head in his hand and looked into her eyes. Searching for something.
She would have given anything to know the question. To give the answer.
Someone whistled, sharp and piercing, below the window, and Parker drew back, his face neutral again.
“The barge pilot grows impatient.” He scooped up the trunk again and held it between them as a bear tamer might hold a chair between himself and his animal—although who was being protected from whom, she didn’t know.
“One more journey and we will be home?” she asked.
Parker gave her a strange look as he lifted the trunk onto his shoulder. “Aye. We will be home.”
6
The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier: Not to be a babbler, brauler, or chatter, nor lavish of his tunge.
Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman: To drawe and peinct.
The pilot berthed at Old Swan, just short of London Bridge. The rain had not let up, and the dark clouds added to the gloom of a winter dusk. Parker could barely make out the pier.
After he’d hauled their trunks from the barge, he lifted the lantern and its flickering glow illuminated Susanna’s shuttered face, her eyes closed against the sting of the ice-laden rain. She must regret the day she’d left Ghent.
With a loud whistle, Parker summoned the boys who huddled under the pier, waiting for the chance to carry bags or beg. They were slow to respond, but at last one poked his head out to see if there was a chance of earning a crust.
Parker held up four fingers, and four ragged figures scrambled up onto the wooden boards of Old Swan, shivering against the freezing rain.
They came forward reluctantly. One of the lads, the smallest one, stopped altogether, and Parker felt a prick of warning along the back of his neck.
The boy looked nervously at his companions, then moved forward again, and Parker saw the way the lad in front drew up, as if steeling himself.
Parker raised his lantern, and the light glinted off something sharp in the boy’s hand.
“My lady!” he shouted, but his warning was drowned out in the cacophony of a thousand icicles hitting the wooden pier. He leaped forward and grabbed her with one arm around her waist, the other still holding the lantern up to see the boy. He caught a glimpse of a lifted arm, a few lurching steps, and swung Susanna b
ehind him and turned back to face them.
The boys stumbled to a halt as Parker set the lantern down and pulled his knife from his boot. He drew his sword with the other hand, rolling his shoulders in anticipation of the fight.
The boy with the knife was so out of his depth, he froze, eyes wide and mouth slack as his companions scattered. The brief, roaring rage in Parker subsided to a howl.
He pounced, flicking the knife out of the boy’s hand with his sword, and grabbed him around the throat.
“Who paid you?” He shook the lad at every word, then half-turned, his knife raised, as someone touched his arm.
Susanna looked back at him, eyes wide, whole body shivering.
“Bring him with us.” Her lips were blue and stiff and he could see she was near collapse, her hand on his arm clinging for dear life.
He raised his head and was surprised to see that one of the boys lingered nearby, the youngest one who had held back earlier. Parker crooked a finger and, careful to stay out of reach, the boy came closer.
“Run to Orchard Cottage in Crooked Lane. Tell Mistress Greene to send round the cart. And to hurry.”
The boy’s mouth turned mulish and his eyes slid to the lad in Parker’s grasp. “Why should I?”
“Because you want to see your brother again, alive and well.” Parker had to shout over the rain, and the boy’s eyes widened. “Now, go.”
“You know these children?” Susanna asked as the boy disappeared into the night.
Parker shook his head, looked down at the older brother. “The only reason the boy would stay was for kin. The rest cleared out fast enough.”
Susanna held herself tight, and he noticed that much of her hair had escaped its hood and was plastered against her cheeks. Her body flinched with every new gust of rain that battered them.
He strained to see up the road, and at last made out the flicker of a lantern. When the cart came into view, Parker saw with surprise that Mistress Greene herself was driving.
“Ho, there, Master Parker. Bit o’ trouble?”
“Just a bit, Mistress Greene. Where is Luke?”
His housekeeper tossed her head. “Lad’s run off on me, and I don’t expect to see him back.”
Parker pushed his captive toward the cart, then lifted him by his collar and set him beside Mistress Greene on the driver’s seat. “Hold on to this devil for me, will you? And mind you get a good hold; I don’t want to have to run after him.”
Mistress Greene took charge, and Parker turned his attention to Susanna, lifting her up into the back of the cart and then hefting the trunks after her.
Finally, he grabbed the younger brother, who’d come skulking along behind the cart, and patted his clothes for any hidden weapons. He felt nothing but the sharp contours of the boy’s ribs through the coarse sacking he wore.
“No need for that, m’lord.” The boy’s indignation made no impression on Parker. He stared the child down for a hard second, then lifted him into the back, where the lad scrambled into a corner and curled up against one of the trunks.
Parker pulled himself up next to Mistress Greene, and took hold of his captive once more.
The boy looked up at Parker, his eyes huge in his thin face. “What are you going to do to me, sir?”
“Make you sorry you were ever born.”
The fire in Parker’s hearth fanned Susanna with its heat. Wave upon delicious wave of hot air beat against her cheeks, and she closed her eyes in pleasure.
She had changed out of her soaking clothes into one of the dry dresses from her trunk, and she could feel her loose hair drying out in the warmth of the study, springing back in small curls around her temples.
Mistress Greene was off in the kitchen, ladling beef soup into bowls for them all, and Parker had given each of the boys one of his shirts. They stood before the fire with the fine cotton hanging to their knees, which made them look even younger and thinner than before.
Susanna studied the older boy—her would-be assassin. It defied imagination that he could be a killer, yet she had seen the knife raised in his hand with her own eyes.
She turned back to Parker, standing at his desk, and saw he watched them all with the blank, shuttered expression he used when he was thinking deeply.
“You have some explaining to do, boy.”
The lad’s face paled despite the heat of the fire. “Sir, I know it, but I beg of you, let my brother go. He weren’t part of it.”
“I don’t think he would go, even if I gave him the choice,” Parker said, and the younger boy shook his head. “Let’s start with your names then.”
With a sigh of capitulation, and a last frustrated look at his younger sibling, the lad rubbed his face with his hand. “I’m Peter Jack, sir, and my brother’s Eric.”
“Well then, Peter Jack. What have you against my lady that you wish her harm?”
Startled, Susanna jerked her gaze to Parker’s face. His lady? Peter Jack stood straight and turned to her. “You did me no wrong, m’lady. I was paid to attack you. But my heart weren’t in it.” He seemed ashamed he was not yet a hardened criminal.
“You can rest assured that the only reason you are standing here with breath in your body is your reluctance for the work, Peter Jack.” Parker crossed his hands over his chest. “Else I’d have done more with my sword than flick that knife into the river.”
Knowing what he could have done, believing absolutely that Parker would have killed him had he thought Peter Jack had the nerve to follow through, brought home to her how dangerous Parker was. He was as cold-blooded as he needed to be.
Peter Jack seemed to realize it too, and he swallowed and stared hard at his bare feet. Eric reached across and took his arm, as if to confirm that his brother was beside him, alive and well.
Parker moved forward and both boys flinched, but he only eased himself into the chair set at an angle to Susanna’s, facing the fire. “So who paid you?”
Peter Jack shrugged. “In this weather, in the dark, with the hood of his cloak over his head?” He lifted his hands at the impossibility of it.
Parker merely stared at him, the planes of his face hard and unbending, and the silence dragged out, broken only by the pop and crack of the wood burning in the fire and the occasional hiss as a drop of icy rain fell down the chimney.
“What did he ask of you?”
“Said you’d be comin’ with a lady. That I were to stab her in the heart and leg it.”
“He knew you?”
Peter Jack shrugged. “Maybe he’s seen me afore.”
Parker shifted in his chair. “How did he pay you?”
“He gave me a shilling. Said the rest would come later.”
“And how could you get it later? If you killed my lady before my eyes, did you think you could return to Old Swan? Ever?”
There was a long silence as Peter Jack seemed to grapple with the consequences of what he’d almost done.
“No, sir.” His voice was a whisper. “It was just, this winter … it’s been so cold. Cold enough you can hardly think. And Eric an’ me an’ the lads, we look out for each other. A whole sovereign he promised me. That would’ve gone a long way.”
Parker let the silence stretch out again, while Susanna fought a lump in her throat. Peter Jack had been manipulated, but he wasn’t the villain here.
It was Eric who broke. “I know him. He’s a crook from round the docks.” Eric didn’t look at Peter Jack, only at Parker.
Parker nodded, still saying nothing. Susanna was out of her depth here, treading water in the thick of it.
“How d’you know him?” Peter Jack asked his brother.
“Seen him afore, haven’t I?” Eric shrugged. “Sometimes you can get a spot o’ work at the dock, or something falls, or gets forgotten. Never know your luck there.”
“Who is he?” Parker leaned forward, but his voice was calm, unexcited.
Eric shook his head. “Never heard his name.” He cocked his head, and Susanna could see his usual
cheekiness returning. “Mostly he’s working the ships coming from the Netherlands, the ones with rolls of cloth. But he’s sellin’ something on the side, too. I seen some high-ups down there, making out they’re inspecting their goods unloading from the ships, but their eyes are always moving, moving, until they find him. Then it’s a quick duck round a corner or into a warehouse, and they’re away again.”
“What do you think he’s selling?”
Eric lifted his hands, palms up. “It’s small, whatever it is. Could be anything at all.”
Parker relaxed back in his chair, a black hawk on its perch, deceptively still. He rested his elbows on the wooden arms and steepled his fingers. “So it could.”
7
The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier: To be able to alleage good, and probable reasons upon everie matter.
Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman: To shape him that is oversaucie wyth her, or that hath small respecte in hys talke, suche an answere, that he maye well understande she is offended wyth hym.
Susanna had gone to bed. She’d barely been able to lift her spoon from her broth to her mouth, and Parker hadn’t been surprised when she said her good nights. Mistress Greene had insisted on helping her, closing the door behind her as they left. She would soon be back to put the boys in Luke’s old room under the stairs in the kitchen, and he wanted to talk to Peter Jack without either woman present.
“It seems Mistress Greene is looking for a new groom and general helper,” he said, and watched Peter Jack turn in his seat by the fire and stare at him.
Eric was fast asleep, sitting straight up, legs crossed. His toes peeped out beneath the shirt Parker had given him.
And he’d thought he’d had it bad as a lad. These boys knew the meaning of a hard life.
He held Peter Jack’s gaze. “I need to trust the person who gets the job.”
“You can trust me, sir. Honest.” Peter Jack turned fully to face him, his eyes enormous, earnest.
“Who among your lads might have turned on you, Peter Jack?” Parker watched the boy swallow hard and look away. He hadn’t expected a test of loyalty so soon.
In a Treacherous Court Page 4