The Huntress

by Susan Carroll

  Very likely he should have known it as well, Martin reflected. If he hadn’t been so blind, he would have seen that Miri would never be his, that she had long been in love with Aristide.

  Martin placed the locket back in the chest and closed the lid. The pain of losing Miri had dulled to a bittersweet ache. They had parted friends, and she had given the locket to his daughter the day that he and Meg had left for England.

  There were times late at night when the house was too quiet, when he kept his lonely vigil over his daughter, that he still missed Miri. Mon Dieu, how he had adored the woman, or so he had believed.

  Miri had often accused him of treating her like some distant goddess, of pursuing her the way he lived his life, as one grand romantic adventure. Likely she was right. Sometimes he felt as though he had not known what it meant to truly love another human being until he had become a father.

  Placing the chest back on the shelf, Martin returned to Meg’s bedside. He tucked the coverlet up over her thin shoulder and stroked back a tendril of her silky brown hair.

  Meg stirred at his touch, nestling deeper into her pillow, and Martin swelled with such love for his child, it was nigh painful. He had not even known of Meg’s existence for the first nine years of her life, but how swiftly she had burrowed her way into his heart until she was knit into his very blood and bone. He loved her so much, it frightened him.

  If he ever lost her, he knew he would run stark mad. Perhaps he was as much of an idiot as Cat accused him of being for not heeding Ariane’s warning. Perhaps he would be wiser to scoop Meg up and run. But to do what and to go where?

  To Faire Isle with all its strange mystical influence and the lure of the ancient knowledge and ways of the daughters of the earth? Magic, even the most benevolent kind, could lead to darkness and danger. Martin had striven far too hard to exorcise all of that from Meg’s world.

  And as for simply taking Meg and trying to disappear…He had inflicted enough of a fugitive existence upon his daughter when they had first come to England and he joined Master Roxburgh’s traveling company of players. Struggling to shield Meg’s innocence in a world of low taverns and lewd talk, often obliged to flee from some puritanical vicar determined to keep his town free of the pernicious influence of rascally actors. Pursued by dogs, constables, aldermen wielding pitchforks.

  Such a madcap existence might have suited Martin just fine. He was used to it. He felt as though he had spent most of his life running from or running to something. But it would not do for his little girl.

  No, Martin thought, his jaw hardening with resolve. He had worked too hard, risked too much to secure a better future for Meg to panic now and throw it all away.

  He would simply have to be more vigilant, hire an extra servant or two, burly men to patrol the garden and keep watch over the house. And he’d threaten to switch Agatha Butterydoor within an inch of her hide if the old woman ever took Meg out of the house alone again.

  He would succeed. He’d give his daughter the kind of life he had never known, secure, contented, and respectable, even if he had to hazard his soul to do it.

  Martin’s mouth twisted ruefully as he thought of the man he was leaving to meet tonight. Sell himself to the devil? Sometimes Martin feared that he had already had.

  Bending down, he brushed a kiss upon Meg’s brow. He retrieved his candle and slipped from the room.

  The figure hiding behind the arras waited long minutes after Martin had left before emerging from her hiding place. Cat moved as quietly as she could, awkward in a pair of Martin’s boots, the toes stuffed with extra stockings in a vain effort to make them fit. His breeches threatened to fall to her knees no matter how tight she cinched the length of cord about her waist, and she had to keep shoving up the sleeves of his shirt to keep them from falling over her hands.

  Not exactly the kind of garb to render one stealthy, but unable to locate her own clothing, Cat had had to make do with whatever she could find, rummaging through Martin’s wardrobe. It felt disturbingly intimate to be wearing the man’s garments, the clothing carrying a hint of his musky, masculine scent.

  Martin’s removal of the candle had plunged the bedchamber back into darkness. With only the moonlight filtering through the window to guide her, Cat banged her shin against a leg of the writing desk.

  Suppressing an oath, she cast an anxious glance at the bed. Meg stirred and Cat froze. But the girl only rolled over, tunneling deeper beneath the bedclothes. Releasing her breath, Cat bent to rub her aching shin, grateful that such a simple action no longer caused her head to reel.

  Meg’s tisane had done its work, just as the girl had promised. Feeling much better, Cat had soon grown restless lying in bed. Having reached the unhappy conclusion that it might be necessary to abduct Meg back to Faire Isle, Cat had decided the sooner she implemented her plan the better. When she had thought the household asleep, Cat had stolen from Martin’s bedchamber to study the house and its environs. What she had discovered was a trifle daunting.

  The Angel was but one house in a row of buildings crowded together on a narrow street. A street that was bound to be bustling with people and carts by day. By night it was patrolled. Cat herself had heard the watchman intoning the hour.

  “Eleven o’clock and a fair night. All is we-ell.”

  As for the rear of the house, the Angel had a small garden, but it was surrounded by a very high wall. Cat had to concede that Martin had chosen well when he had selected this house to rent. It would not be easy to spirit his daughter out of here unseen.

  Cat had been creeping about upstairs, checking for the possibility of an egress to the roof, when she had been surprised by Martin le Loup and forced to take refuge behind the arras in Meg’s room.

  Surprised by the man? Cat frowned, thinking it a poor word to describe the tumult of her feelings as she had watched le Loup bend over his sleeping child.

  Cat had set him down as an arrogant, swaggering knave. But as he had drawn the coverlet about Meg, the rogue’s face had been so open and vulnerable, Cat had felt half-ashamed to be spying upon him.

  His expression had been such a mingling of tenderness, love, and fear that it had taken Cat back to those times when her own father had tucked her in. She remembered grumbling in a sleepy voice.

  “You don’t need to do that, Da. I can tuck myself in. I am not afeard of the dark anymore. I am not a babe.”

  “Alas, no, you aren’t,” her father had replied in a strangely melancholy voice. “I look in upon you at night to appease my fears rather than yours.”

  “Yours, Da?” Cat had peered up in wonder at her bold warrior father. “What could you ever be afraid of?”

  Tiernan of the Laughing Eyes had skated his rough broken knuckles along her cheek. “Of losing you, my wee lass. You are such a great treasure, I am afeard some dark night the sidhe might have a mind to steal you away from me.”

  Cat’s lips curved in a wistful smile at the memory. The sidhe. Martin le Loup certainly had more substantial fears for Meg than Tiernan’s worry that the little people might snatch his daughter.

  Tonight there was only one bad fairy creeping about the house and that was her, Cat thought guiltily. As she gazed at the girl innocently asleep, Cat abandoned all thought of abduction.

  Not because of the difficulties of carrying out such a scheme, the layout of the house, the crowded streets, finding a way to get Meg alone—Cat was confident she could surmount all of that.

  What stayed her was the thought of that little girl whose father was everything to her and the look on Martin’s face when he had kissed his daughter good night.

  No matter how badly she wanted to get back to Faire Isle and Ariane, she would not be stealing anyone’s child. That left her with no other choice than to remain in London and guard Meg until she persuaded Martin to change his mind.

  Quietly exiting the room, Cat stretched herself across the threshold to begin her watch.

  WHITEHALL SPRAWLED OVER TWENTY-THREE ACRES OF LOND
ON, a city within a city. The palace was a haphazard jumble of architectural styles, a warren of fifteen hundred rooms where Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers jostled, fought, and intrigued for scraps of the royal favor.

  But neither queen nor court were in residence, Elizabeth preferring her palace at Richmond during the summer months. As Martin followed his escort through a maze of corridors, their footsteps echoed in silence through empty halls. Many of the walls were bare, the costly tapestries taken down and removed with the queen, but some of the portraits remained, particularly those of the late king, Henry VIII. It was as though Elizabeth was determined that no one should ever forget whose daughter she was.

  Martin’s usher was a laconic young man who looked bored, as though it was mere routine to be escorting dubious characters to meet with the principal secretary of the realm at such a late hour, and very likely it was. Sir Francis Walsingham was rumored to employ a legion of shadowy men, of whom Martin feared he was but one more.

  The page left Martin waiting in a small antechamber while he announced Martin’s arrival to Sir Francis. The small room was occupied by a clerk with a yellow beard and a face pitted from a bout of smallpox. He labored wearily with quill and ink over some parchment. Glancing up with tired, red-rimmed eyes, Thomas Phelippes acknowledged Martin’s presence with a curt nod before returning to his work.

  Phelippes’s taciturnity left Martin nothing to do but pace and wish himself elsewhere, back home with his daughter. Once, the kind of furtive dealings he had embarked upon with Walsingham would have been like a heady wine to Martin, but his taste for such intrigue had begun to pall.

  “We are respectable folk now,” Martin had told Meg, but that was not true and never would be while he continued in Walsingham’s secret employ. He hoped that the information he had recently acquired might suffice to bring his service to an end.

  The page returned to inform Martin that Sir Francis would receive him now. Martin followed the young man into a study crammed with books. Sir Francis was said to be fluent in at least five other tongues besides his own, and the volumes lining the shelves represented a diversity of languages as well as interests.

  There were books on history, law, politics, castles and fortifications, as well as treatises on training militia and tactics of war and ledgers of the expenses for the queen’s many households and estates.

  It made Martin’s head throb just to contemplate it all. He often wondered how Sir Francis coped with such a staggering array of detail and information, to say nothing of the locked cabinet containing more-secret matters, to which only Walsingham had the key.

  One could hardly see the man seated behind his desk, the surface was piled so high with copies of treaties, correspondence from ambassadors, maps, and haphazardly stacked paperwork.

  Somewhere in the midst of this avalanche, Walsingham set his seal to a letter he had just completed. Absorbed by his task, he barely looked up as Martin entered.

  Sir Francis was a man of lean stature and long narrow countenance. His pointed black beard and sallow complexion had led the queen to dub him “the Moor.” Attired in simple dark clothing, he could have easily been mistaken for a clerk himself instead of what he was, Elizabeth’s principal secretary and a powerful member of her privy council.

  He handed the letter off to the page, commanding, “See that this is dispatched at once.”

  As the young man hurried off on his errand, Walsingham beckoned to Martin, indicating he should be seated. “Your pardon for the delay, Master Wolfe.”

  “I am entirely at your disposal, Mr. Secretary.” Martin sketched a bow, reflecting that that was far truer than he liked. “I would hardly expect to take precedence over some urgent matter of state.”

  “Matters of state,” Walsingham grimaced. “Yes, there is always an endless supply of those. I have been besieged of late by letters from justices throughout the country, complaining of riots owing to that infernal comet.”

  “The comet?” Martin arched one brow as he settled himself into a chair opposite the desk.

  “That fiery object that has been hovering in the sky this past month,” the secretary replied dryly. “I trust you have noticed it.”

  “It would be impossible not to, but I can find enough trouble right here on earth without concerning myself with a celestial disturbance a million miles away.”

  “Regrettably, you are one of the few with the sense to realize that. I vow that the rest of the country seems to have run a bit mad, panicked citizens paying out good coin to mountebanks for protective charms, preachers ranting on street corners about the end of days. Most recently, I had this letter from a justice of the peace regarding an agitator in Surrey who has been spreading untold alarm.”

  Walsingham picked up a sheet of parchment and read,

  “This wild-eyed vagrant hath stirred up much unrest in my district by preaching that the comet is a manifestation of the wrath of the Almighty, the fiery orb forged of the sins of mankind rising like a noxious gas into the heavens.”

  Martin laughed. “Good Lord. If that were the case, we’d be plagued by comets every day of every year.”

  “Precisely. Unfortunately, this madman has managed to stir up a great deal of hysteria. The justice planned to hang him. I, however, recommended the poor fool be confined to St. Bethlehem’s Hospital for the insane. That will just as effectively put an end to his agitation.”

  Locked up in Bedlam, likely never again to see the light of day. Martin repressed a shudder, thinking he would have by far preferred the rope.

  Walsingham tossed the letter from the justice atop a stack of other papers and rubbed his eyes. There were some who referred to the secretary as the man who never slept and Martin could almost believe it.

  There was something preternatural about this dark, gaunt man who tended to keep his own counsel in a court noted for its wit and gossip. Martin often reflected how Sir Francis must stand out in his somber clothing amongst the bright silks, jewels, and furs of the courtiers, like a raven amongst peacocks.

  Or perhaps, and far more likely, he simply faded into the background, a silent shadow, ever watchful. Watching and waiting—it was what Walsingham did best.

  Leaning back in his chair, he folded his hands across the front of his dark robes and trained his penetrating gaze upon Martin.

  “The hour grows late, Master Wolfe, and I have many more matters that require my attention. So let us get down to business. What have you to report to me? Some good information at last, I trust.”

  “I have information. I don’t know how good you will find it,” Martin replied. “The man who has been frequenting the Plough Inn near the Temple bar and styling himself Captain Fortescue is an imposter, just as you suspected. He is really a priest by the name of John Ballard.”

  “Indeed.” Walsingham leaned forward eagerly. “You are sure of this?”

  “I attended a mass celebrated by Ballard at the house of Sir Anthony Babington.” A forbidden rite that could get a man clapped into prison or worse. Martin made haste to add, “I did so purely for the purpose of establishing my bona fides as a fellow recusant. It was not all that difficult. I—”

  Martin checked himself on the verge of revealing that he had spent part of his youth in Paris amongst friars after he had been abandoned on the steps of Notre Dame by his mother.

  Walsingham was only familiar with Martin as a former agent for Henry of Navarre. Martin had first crossed paths with the secretary two years earlier when Martin had journeyed to London in an effort to raise much-needed funds for the beleaguered Protestant king.

  That was all that Walsingham knew of Martin and he preferred to keep it that way. He had no desire to have the secretary looking too closely into his past, especially not the parts regarding his daughter.

  “I am familiar enough with the forms of the old faith to pass myself off as a Catholic.”

  “Indeed.” Walsingham’s countenance was impassive, his voice noncommittal, but his shrewd gaze never left Martin’s
face. “Another fine performance by you, I have no doubt.”

  “Passable.” Martin hunched his shoulders in a modest gesture. “But not good enough to convince Babington and Father Ballard to take me fully into their confidence.

  “I have been able to learn more by lurking about the Plough Inn of an evening. Young Babington and his friends often repair there for supper and are not always cautious when deep in their cups.”

  Martin paused and went on grimly, “There is definitely some plot afoot to get rid of Queen Elizabeth and place her cousin, Mary of Scots, on the throne. I overheard Babington asking Father Ballard if it would be wrong to kill Elizabeth.”

  “An assassin with a conscience. How admirable.” Walsingham sneered.

  “Ballard assured him it would be no sin. The Pope has declared Elizabeth a heretic and would absolve Babington. And yet he still sounded loath to act. Truly, for all of his bold talk, Babington does not strike me as much of a threat. He’s an indecisive and dream-ridden young fellow. I believe he has resolved to write to the Queen of Scots herself, asking for her blessing before he proceeds any further.”

  Martin’s lip curled contemptuously. “How the young fool thinks he will manage that, I know not. Everyone knows the Scottish queen is guarded too closely at Chartley to receive any communication from the outside world.

  “Oh, the lady shall receive his letter.” Walsingham gave a rare smile, so cold it chilled Martin’s blood. “I will relax the guard and see that she does.”

  Martin regarded Sir Francis in astonishment. “Your pardon, sir, but hadn’t you better arrest Babington and this priest at once? Wouldn’t it be dangerous to let Elizabeth’s enemies correspond and plot against her?”

  “Dangerous, but necessary.” Walsingham was not a forthcoming man, seldom explaining himself fully to anyone, even his queen.

  He surprised Martin when he steepled his fingers together and continued gravely, “I have dealt with many of these Catholic conspiracies against Her Majesty. In the past I always moved too swiftly, never rooting out the dark heart of the matter. But this time I mean to end these plots once and for all. To do that I must entrap the Scottish Jezebel herself and offer Queen Elizabeth incontrovertible proof of her cousin’s guilt.”