by Susan Wiggs
“Queen Elizabeth’s keys.” He delivered the reply in a bored voice.
“Advance the keys. All’s well.” She held out her hand, praying it would not tremble.
The warder hesitated. “Are you falling ill, Stokes?”
“Mayhap, sir.” She scratched her throat.
When the keys were passed to her, she neatly substituted those she had pilfered from the pantler at Whitehall. After the ceremony, she marched off to the guardroom with the others. At the door, she stopped.
“Problem, Stokes?” someone asked.
She tugged down the brim of her hat. “I have to take a piss.”
Her fellow guard took down a torch from a wall sconce. “You seem strange tonight, Stokes.”
She snatched the torch from him. “Nay, what is strange is making prisoners of innocent men.” With that, she tossed the torch onto the thatched roof and fled, praying for a miracle as the guards screamed in fear and rage.
She raced to Beauchamp Tower, bounded up the winding stairs and unlocked Aidan’s cell.
“Don’t think for a minute,” she said to the darkened room, “that I have forgotten your promise about the pig.”
He made one of those Celtic exclamations she so dearly loved, and then he hauled her in his arms, squeezing her so deliciously hard that the breath left her. He whispered something heartfelt and Gaelic.
“And what does that mean?” she asked tartly.
“It means you are a shining little miracle.”
“Also an idiot,” she said, pretending his words meant nothing. “A brainsick idiot.”
Mortlock and Dove surprised her. Like a pair of watchdogs they stood at the Galley Key, waiting patiently; it had taken Pippa and Aidan most of the night to steal out of the Tower and make their way to the riverside. The flaming thatch on the guardroom had provided enough of a diversion to get them out onto Petty Wales Street, but they had narrowly escaped a party of guards by hiding in an abandoned well. Though she would never admit it, she had loved every minute of the adventure.
“So you showed up after all,” Dove said. “Did you bring the rest of our pay?”
“You’ll have it after I see that you’ve done as you promised,” Pippa said.
Both Mort and Dove subjected Aidan to a long inspection. “So who’s the toff, anyway? He’s the same one what saved you from the pillory, eh?”
“And that’s all you need to know.” She was getting nervous. These two had never been trustworthy, and she did not like the way they were eyeing the fine needlework of Aidan’s shirt and the quality of his leather boots. He looked weary, his cheeks hollowed by his fast. While they had hidden in the well she had made him eat a loaf of bread she’d brought with her, but it would be days before he regained his strength.
“Did you get the boat?” she asked Mort and Dove.
Mortlock’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your hurry?”
Aidan took a step toward him. Despite his lack of food and sleep, he towered like a mountain over Mortlock. “I believe,” Aidan said softly, “the lady asked you a question.”
Mort’s crooked nose twitched, a sign of fear Pippa recognized. “A lady, are we now?” he asked, his tone derisive even as he edged away from Aidan.
“Ooh!” said Dove, fluttering a make-believe fan.
She touched Aidan’s sleeve. “Ignore them. They have always been obnoxious.”
“Ob-nox-shus,” Dove said, trying the word.
She tried not to let her irritation show, tried not to let her gaze stray to the middle of the broad river, where the Venetian galley lay at anchor, waiting. “A pity you failed to accomplish the simple task of securing a boat. I’ll have to find a ferryman—”
“It’s here.” Mort jerked his thumb upriver. “In the boathouse yonder.”
She paid them. They bit the coins and bobbed their heads but did not leave. “Look,” she said, “I’ve nothing more to spare.” She shrugged out of the voluminous guardsman’s jacket and dropped it on the ground. “We’re off, then,” she said, and started toward the boathouse.
Muttering, Mort and Dove slunk off into the shadows. At the watersteps of the rickety structure, she turned to face Aidan. “You understand what you must do.”
“Take the lighterboat to the Venetian galley.” He pointed to the shadowy hulk at anchor in the deepest part of the river. A hint of dawn colored the smoky sky.
“The contessa assured me you’ll have diplomatic sanctuary there. Once you’re aboard, the English can’t touch you.” She could barely speak past the lump in her throat. “It is so hard to say goodbye.”
He caught her against him. “I know, my sweet. If I live a thousand years, I should never forget you.”
Weeping, she lifted her face and waited for his kiss. His lips brushed hers and then their mouths clung, breath and tears and hearts mingling until she almost cried out with the pain of it.
She broke away and stepped back. “Even though I do not love you,” she whispered, “I shall miss you as I miss the sun in winter.”
“Pippa—”
“Seize them!” shouted a voice from the gloom. “Seize the fugitives.”
She glanced back at the Galley Key, and her heart plunged to her knees. In the blink of an eye, she realized her mistake. Mort and Dove were supposed to keep an eye out. Instead they’d taken the money and run.
Straight to the Tower guards.
Her curse echoed across the river. The pounding of footsteps came from the black maw of an alleyway in front of them.
“It appears your friends found a higher bidder,” Aidan said in a disgusted voice. “Now what do we do?”
She grabbed his hand. “Run!”
Her stolen, overlarge boots made running clumsy. She stumbled along the quay, then clutched Aidan’s arm while she shook off the boots and left them behind.
She was glad for the predawn darkness, for it concealed her smile of pure pleasure. There was little that she missed about her former life on the streets, but every now and then a good chase was exhilarating.
Few people—certainly not the night bellmen or Tower guards—knew the rabbit warren maze of London streets as well as Pippa did. She prayed Mort and Dove had not offered their services as guides. “Just stay hard by,” she said to Aidan, ducking her head beneath a brick archway to enter the underworld of the East End.
It was gratifying to be running for her life with a man like Aidan. He was swift and strong despite his fast, and he didn’t ask stupid questions. If they stayed ahead of their pursuers and kept to the shadows, they should have no trouble eluding the guards.
She ducked down a cramped alley, tearing off her baldric as she ran and tossing the belt into a sewage conduit. At the end of the alley, they emerged into a small market square awakening to the business day. The spire of St. Dunstan-in-the-East loomed against the lightening sky. Even at this early hour, traders had arrived with rickety carts and hastily set up booths. A deafening roar of music, laughter, and general hubbub filled the air.
“Ah, this is splendid,” said Aidan. “We’ve come to the one place where they’ll be sure to spy us.”
“Ye of little faith,” she scolded. “We’ll just go back the way we came.”
The moment she spoke, excited shouts issued from the alley. The soldiers had found the baldric.
A nasty thorn of worry pricked at Pippa. They needed to hide. She shoved her elbow at a side doorway of St. Dunstan’s. It swung open to reveal a set of dank, sagging stairs.
“What do you hope to accomplish by trapping us in a spire?” Aidan demanded.
“Trust me,” she replied. “They won’t look here.” The stairs groaned ominously beneath their weight. The smell of rot hung thick in the air. At a high landing, a platform gave access to the large, heavy bell on one end and a low opening in the stone spire on the other.
They burst outside and found themselves on a wall walk surrounding the steeple. The surface was perilously slanted. A low murmur burbled from a dovecote in one corner.
<
br /> Across another corner, someone had pegged a few articles of clothing out to dry.
“Ah, luck,” said Aidan, plucking down a plain jerkin. He pulled it over his shirt. The garment fit taut across his chest, so he left the lacings open. Just for a moment, Pippa stared at his chest and all thought fled.
He cracked a smile. “There’s something for you here, too.” He took down a threadbare brown skirt and held it out for her. She yanked the skirt on over her breeches and used a square of linen to tie over her hair.
“How do I look?”
“Like an angel. Any moment now, I expect you to sprout wings.”
“Very funny.”
He grazed her cheek with his knuckles. “I was not trying to be funny. I—”
“There they are!” exclaimed a voice far below. Four armed men ducked into the stairwell.
“I wish you’d been right about the wings,” she said.
He did not answer, but untied one end of the clothesline and made a loop in the rope.
Bumps and thuds and curses sounded hollowly in the old stairwell.
“Hang on to me,” Aidan said. “Put your arms around my neck.”
Falling from a church roof in the arms of the O Donoghue Mór, she decided, was as good a way as any to die. She latched her arms around his strong neck, reveling for a moment in the firmness of his flesh. Thank God he had not starved himself to death after all.
Brandishing pikes and long-handled axes, the soldiers emerged from the stairwell and stormed across the roof. Three sharp prongs from a pikestaff drove toward them. Aidan turned to shield her body with his own. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face against his chest.
He took one step backward, then swung out in a wide arc. They dropped so fast, her stomach seemed to rise to her throat. The rope sang as it paid out, hissing across the eaves of the building.
They stopped with jarring abruptness and swung helplessly, bumping against the wall of the church tower.
“Now what, Your Loftiness?” she asked in a voice that was little more than a squeak of fright. She clung to him harder, winding her legs around his waist and locking her ankles. He mumbled something in Gaelic, and she peered at his face. Dear God, he was dizzy with weakness from fasting.
“I wonder how far it is to the street,” he said.
She peeked at the alley below. Many feet below. Many perilous, bone-crunching feet below.
“Too far to jump.” She dared to look up. “Uh-oh.”
“What is it?”
She stared speechless as the dawn light glinted off the curved ax head of a soldier’s halberd. It swung down once, twice, thrice.
Pippa screamed. They plummeted, breaking apart, her skirts billowing. Her mind emptied in anticipation of the end. Instead, she struck something and stopped falling. She heard a grunt from Aidan.
They had landed in some sort of canvas awning. Before she could catch her breath, an ominous ripping sound began and they were plunging downward again.
This time, they had not far to fall. They landed in a tangle of canvas upon something soft and rather strangely warm. She apprised the situation through her dazed senses. Her nostrils flared, and she choked. She and Aidan lay atop a pile of manure in a cart.
Aidan muttered in Irish and bounded out of the cart, pulling her after him while the carter looked on, amazed. The canvas awning had shielded them from the worst of the muck.
They rushed along through the cloth sellers’ booths and peddlers’ carts. Slowly, gradually, they caught their breath, and Pippa conquered her shaking knees. Somehow she found the presence of mind to steal a roll of cheese.
“Eat,” she said. “It’s not a whole roasted pig, but chew on that.”
He devoured the cheese in three bites. Pippa began to breathe more easily. But when they started toward the east exit of the square, two soldiers came toward them.
Aidan gave a short, lusty laugh. Instead of setting upon the soldiers, he took Pippa in his arms and kissed her, long and hard. She made a little whimper of surprise and then simply gave herself to him.
He kissed her until the soldiers had passed, apparently discounting them as a pair of eager lovers. Then, just as abruptly as he had grabbed her, he let her go and started hurrying again.
She almost stumbled as she tried to keep up. He acted completely unaffected by a kiss that had all but singed her eyelashes, damn him.
Shouts rang from the steeple walk. The men there, black crows against the gentle pink sky, gesticulated wildly to their compatriots.
Pippa and Aidan ran through Fowler Street and turned back down toward the Thames. When at last they reached the Galley Key, both were nearing the end of their strength.
The lighterboat was gone. Gray rivers of fog swirled around their knees as they called to the ship’s master. A tender broke away from the long galley and rowed silently toward them.
She squinted at the two men in the tender. She did not recognize them. Still, the contessa had assured her that the crew of the Venetian ship could be trusted.
She shivered. “It is goodbye again, my lord. You should have taken my word for it in the first place.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a self-deprecating grin. “I needed a new set of clothing anyway. And of course—” he touched the tip of her nose “—it is fitting that our parting was as perilous as our meeting.”
“Our parting,” she whispered, despising the finality of it. “Ah, Aidan, I shall never forget you.”
“A touching sentiment,” said a melodious, accented voice. “You can tell her on the voyage.” Out of the mist stepped the contessa, wrapped in rich black silk velvet. Behind her stood an escort of Venetian bodyguards. “You’re late,” she added. “The tide is up, and they were about to leave without you.”
The tender bumped gently into place. Aidan hesitated. “A moment, Your Ladyship—”
“You don’t have a moment, and neither does Pippa,” snapped the contessa. “If you’re caught now, I’ll offer no more help. Now, get in, both of you.”
Pippa gasped. “I’m not going to Ireland!”
“You must.”
“My lady,” she whispered past the tears that burned in her throat, “you don’t know what you’re asking. I have a place at court now, and the queen—”
“She’s asking you,” Aidan snapped, “to get in that boat before I hurl you in. The contessa is right. If you stay, you could be arrested for helping me escape.”
“But—”
“Your role in the flight of the O Donoghue Mór will be found out,” he declared. “Perhaps if the dodge had been quieter, we might have eluded attention. But you’ve been seen with me.”
The contessa handed something to Aidan. He pushed Pippa toward the boat. “You would be treated not as a prisoner of noble rank, but as a common traitor. Do you know the punishment for that?”
The contessa made a slashing gesture across her throat.
Pippa felt cold inside. What a fool she had been. She had bought his freedom at the price of her dreams.
The contessa kissed both her cheeks and whispered, “Go with the O Donoghue Mór. It is better to run toward the future than cling to the past.”
Pippa turned to Aidan. He stood poised with one foot braced on the quay and the other in the service boat, his large hand held out for hers, his face utterly inscrutable.
The rising sun set fire to the sky behind him, and for a moment he looked as splendid as a painting on a church wall. His black hair drifted, a long ripple on the breeze. His eyes were penetrating, yet impenetrable.
“Come with me, Pippa,” he said at last. “I’ll make it all right, I promise. Come with me to Ireland.”
Part Two
It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!
—Oscar Wilde
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br /> The Ballad of Reading Gaol, st. 9
Diary of a Lady
It is only now, days later, that I am able to dry my tears and take pen in hand. Yea, I do grieve as any mother would, for my son has gone to war, but this is not the reason for my distress.
Oliver is like a madman, pacing the halls of Blackrose Priory and laying curses upon anyone who has the ill fortune to cross his path.
Neither of us can sleep at night; we have not been able to sleep since the message was delivered from London. Cruel trick or honest report; I know not which it is.
I know only that someone penned me a message, copying the inscription from the back of the Romanov brooch. That singular object was given to me by Oliver’s stepmother, Juliana. I thought it had been lost forever.
The last time I saw the precious jewel, I had pinned it to the bodice of my beloved little daughter, just before I said farewell to her, not realizing I was never to see her again.
—Lark de Lacey,
Countess of Wimberleigh
Eleven
Aidan sought shelter in an abandoned fortress by the sea. Dunloe Castle once housed the O Sullivan Mór, but he had died, like so many others, in Desmond’s great war against the English.
The windy hall stood as bleak and empty as a plundered tomb. Aidan tried not to think about the slaughter that had occurred here as he awaited word of Ross Castle and thought about Pippa.
She had hated the voyage. She had spent the entire time in a cramped private berth, doubled over by seasickness and shivering with fright. He had expected her to perk up once she was on dry land, but she was more subdued than ever.
He went to a window and looked out, and his heart lifted. The rounded hills, greener than the green of England, wore sturdy necklaces of drystone tillage walls. Sheep and cattle grazed upon the verdant abundance, and cloud towers swept toward the heavens.
This was Ireland—a tragic beauty blithely unaware that she was doomed. The thought filled him with the sharp, sweet ache of loving something, knowing in his heart it was hopeless.
Hearing a footstep, he turned. Iago and Donal Og strode into the hall. “Has the news come yet?” asked his cousin.