We did not make a fire, in case it betrayed our location. I assumed first watch; within seconds, Shelton was snoring loud enough to make me think we hardly needed anything else to alert our would-be trackers. I had to smile as I remembered the time he had first brought me to London and I dozed off on my horse, losing my cap. Apparently, I was not the only one who could sleep anywhere.
Not tonight. Crouched under a large oak with my sword unsheathed at my side and dagger in hand, the horses tethered nearby in the shadows, I was alert to every sound. In the brush, unseen animals rustled and branches snapped; the eerie ululation of a fox echoed, and the rising wind flushed the sky clear, revealing a black firmament strewn with a thousand stars and a sullen sliver of moon. I might have admired this display of grandeur, which I had not seen in years, living as I had been in crowded cities where thickets of eaves and spires blotted out the sight. Instead, I cursed the way the wind agitated the air and swirled among the trees, scattering leaves and making boughs creak. I could not tell if the sounds I heard signaled a stealthy approach.
Then I did hear it: the unmistakable pad of footsteps. Ducking farther into the shadow cast by the oak, I edged around its wide trunk to see three figures in cloaks creeping toward us, glinting steel in their hands.
In the distance behind them, seated immobile on a horse, was another cloaked figure.
My pulse quickened. I had thought Cecil would have me watched, but now it did not appear quite so simple. Perhaps he had ordered me captured and brought back to court, or perhaps my suspicion that I had outlived my usefulness was on the mark. Whichever the case, I had to assume that mounted figure was not here to ensure my health, and I took up the handful of pebbles I had collected by my sword and tossed them at Shelton, aiming above his head. The rattle as they struck the earth woke him instantly; like the former soldier he was, he did not cry out but was on his haunches within seconds, sword out and ready as he crawled away to hide.
If these fools thought to catch us unawares, they were in for a surprise.
I discerned urgent whispering among them as they neared; some type of argument. They were making more noise than professionals would, I realized in relief; they must be the locals they seemed to be, hired on the spot. As I braced for their arrival, I took another glance at the mounted figure silhouetted against the night sky. He had not moved. He seemed to be studying the impending situation with detachment, restraining his horse with an expert hand.
I could only hope he did not have a crossbow or firearm aimed at us.
The approaching men’s voices became clear: “He says not to harm the younger one. The older one we can rob and kill.”
“Good,” replied another with glee. “I didn’t like the look of that old bastard.”
They were so close I could have reached out and grabbed one of them by his knotted rat’s nest, slicing my dagger across his throat. I made myself stay still until they slipped past me to enter the clearing, making for the crumpled blanket and saddlebag. In the dim moonlight, it appeared as if someone was still asleep there, and on reaching them, they came to a halt.
Shelton exploded from his hiding place in the woods, his sword raised, roaring like a dragon. In his other hand, he brandished a broken branch, thick as an arm, which he swiped at the group, causing them to leap back and stagger into each other. Blades razed the air; they were so intent on evading him they did not think to look behind them until one turned about and impaled himself on my sword.
Blood spewed from his mouth. He crumpled and fell to the ground. The stench of his loosening bowels clogged my nostrils as I ripped my blade out and whirled on the second one, slashing down to block the thrust of his dagger, my sword’s edge biting hard into his wrist. He yelped, dropping his weapon. As he spun about to grapple for it, the third one rushed toward me, knifing his wounded companion and pushing him aside to thrust his dagger at me. With a heave of the branch he carried, Shelton delivered a solid blow to the back of my attacker’s head that sent him sprawling. The wounded one, I realized, was the ferrety man I had seen staring at me in the tavern; he clutched at his wrist, gazing open-mouthed at his friend who had turned on him. Then he lifted his gaze to me. As panic flared in his eyes, I warned, “Do not move. Do not shout. If you so much as breathe, I will kill you.” I looked at Shelton, who stood over the one he had clubbed. “Watch them,” I said, and I dashed back to the oak tree, prepared to find that mysterious mounted figure galloping upon us. Our own horses were tethered close by, their hooves and bridles muffled with cloth, but we had only seconds to get to them and mount before whoever the leader was came galloping into the clearing to finish what his parcel of knaves had bungled.
When I looked, the horizon was empty. The figure had vanished.
I heard my own panting in my ears as I waited, thinking he must have gone around, using the trees as cover. After minutes passed and no one appeared, I turned back to find Shelton hauling the wounded one by the scruff of his jerkin. He threw him at my feet, eliciting a howl of pain.
“Who hired you?” I asked.
Shelton snorted. “The town idiot, apparently, seeing as none of this motley lot could hunt down a rooster, much less a man. I hope whoever he was didn’t pay you by the head, fool.”
The same thought had occurred to me. No one of experience would ever hire men like these. To inform from a distance, perhaps, if they could stay out of the tavern long enough, which, judging by the reek of ale wafting off the one at my feet, had not been the case. Cecil would not have given them a second look, not for something as important as apprehending his own intelligencer.
“Is that other one…?” I said. Shelton shook his head. “I must have hit him too hard.”
The man at my feet gave a plaintive moan. I returned my regard to him. He was a pathetic sight, soaked in his own blood, the bone of his wrist gleaming within the deep gash where my well-honed blade had cut through his flesh, severing tendons and arteries, no doubt. His side, too, was bleeding profusely from the dagger stuck in it.
“You are going to die,” I said, “lest we tend to you. Which we will—if you talk.”
“Please don’t let me die,” he whispered. “I’ll … I’ll do anything.”
I leaned to him. “I’ll ask you one last time: Who hired you?”
His choked reply iced my veins: “I don’t know who he was. But he said you are a spy for the new queen.”
EAST RIDING, YORKSHIRE
Chapter Eleven
We bound the man’s wrist with a strip of cloth ripped from the hem of my shirt and used the saddle blanket to staunch the wound in his side, but both articles soon turned sopping red, and within a few hours fever arose and glazed his eyes.
Shelton wanted us to leave him and give chase to the leader. But I knew he was long gone and refused to abandon this man who’d been injured by my hand. Propping him against the oak, I sat beside him and plied him with questions.
What I managed to glean only increased my apprehension. A stranger in a hooded cloak had approached him and his companions hours before our arrival, instructing them to watch for two men who would pass by and detailing our descriptions.
“He said you would fight,” he told me, between gasps of pain. “But he wanted you alive. The other one … he said we could kill him.”
“Did he say why he wanted me?” I said, deeply alarmed that this stranger not only knew that I served Elizabeth but had ordered my capture. Could it have been Cecil’s work, after all? No one else but him would have done this; it had to be, and yet every instinct in me rebelled against the idea. Cecil was capable of many things, and was ruthless when it came to protecting his interests, but he detested clumsiness. If this was indeed his doing, then he had to be desperate.
“Coldhearted villain,” growled Shelton from where he bent over the dead man, rummaging in his jerkin. “I ought to crush your skull in like I did your friend here.” Extracting a purse of coin, he let a low whistle. “This is quite a sum. Whoever hired them had means.”
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“What happened then?” I asked the dying man.
“He gave us that money and left. He said there would be more if we caught you alive. So, we sat in the tavern to wait.” He coughed bloodied foam. He did not have much time left. “After we spotted you and followed, he appeared on the road. He … he must have been watching us, to see if we would do as he bid. He showed us the spot where you turned into the woods.”
“Bastard.” Shelton loomed over him, his fists clenched.
“Go,” I said. “See to the horses.” With a begrudging grunt, Shelton went to Cinnabar and Cerberus, who were neighing, yanking at their tethers, distressed by the smell of blood, while I remained intent on discovering everything I could before the man lapsed into delirium.
His fever crested. He began to babble, of a sister who would starve without him and he never meant harm, but his parents had died of flux and left him nothing, so what could he do, when his sister wasted away with only him to depend on?
Then he shifted suddenly lucid eyes to me, his fever ebbing for a moment. He whispered, “That man … he said something else. About you. He said … you must pay for a sin.”
I swallowed, watching him until his chin drooped against his chest, his mouth parting to release a final seepage of breath. Blood pooled about him.
By the time Shelton returned, he was dead.
And I knew that the shadow of my past had found me.
* * *
We left the man under the tree; we had no means with which to bury him, and as we took to the road once more in the opalescent light of dawn, leaving his corpse and those of his two companions behind for the forest beasts, I did not speak.
Shelton allowed me my silence until we were well into our travel, before he said, “You’re white as a ghost. What did that coxcomb tell you?”
I did not look at him. “He and the other two were pawns. This stranger who hired them, he wanted them to die. He knew from the start they would be no match for us. He did it to scare us, to prove he has the upper hand. He must be the same man who seized Lady Parry.”
“But how did he know you’d even be here?” said Shelton in disbelief. “I thought only you and the queen were aware of the situation surrounding Lady Parry.”
“Somehow, he knew. He planned it.” I gripped my reins. “You were right: We should have gone after him. He is taunting us. God, he must have reveled in it, watching those fools sacrifice themselves for his sake—and all so he could deliver his message.”
“Oh? What message would that be?”
“That I must pay for a sin.” I turned to him. “Those are the same words that were written on a note found on Blanche Parry’s saddle after she went missing. Elizabeth showed me the note. Whoever he is, this stranger has a purpose.”
Shelton regarded me for a long moment. He did not press me for more, though I sensed he wanted to. “What now?”
“We proceed as planned. He did not come after us, so I assume he accomplished what he intended with those men. He must have gone back into hiding but when the time is right, he will find me. I only pray it isn’t too late for us to find Lady Parry.”
* * *
We reached Kingston-upon-Hull three days later, exhausted, saddle-sore, and so soiled from the mud and sleet of the road, not to mention the blood crusted like rust on our clothes, it was a marvel the sentries granted us entry through the gates. The city, situated on the northern bank of the Humber estuary, was prosperous, unlike much of the rest of the realm. As we rode through the streets, we noticed evidence of this wealth in the many shops and the open marketplace displaying a variety of goods, in baskets of wool carded by women and children on house stoops, and from the clatter of looms that produced the coveted wool stockings exported to London.
Locating a well-appointed bathhouse, we stabled our horses and I divested myself of my filth-stiffened garb to soak in a hot tub for an hour. Changing into a fresh shirt, jerkin, and hose, having done my best to brush the clotted soil from my cloak, I felt almost normal again.
I was also ravenous.
Shelton awaited me outside. He brought me to a tavern near the bathhouse, where we ordered food and ale. He, too, was much improved, having bathed, changed his shirt, and buffed his boots, though nothing could be done about his face, which prompted the servers to eye him as if he were about to upend the table like a disfigured giant and initiate a rampage.
I devoured fried haddock in beer sauce. It was not court fare, by any means; it was better. Still hot from the kitchens and devoid of the heavy creams and spices that court cooks used to disguise the food’s lack of freshness, I finished every bite, down to the flaky bits on the bones.
“I see you haven’t lost your appetite,” remarked Shelton.
With my mouth full, I muttered, “A man has to keep his strength up.”
“Aye, he does.” Shelton drained his tankard, lifting his hand to signal for another round. As the server warily set a pitcher before us, the bells of a nearby minster tolled the hour.
“We’ll have to hurry if we want to reach Withernsea by nightfall,” I said.
Shelton grunted. “We’ll make it. I think I have earned the right to your trust, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“Good. Because fond of you as I am, I do not like secrets when my neck is on the block. I know you believe this stranger has a purpose. What I want to know is what you think his purpose is.”
I reached for the pitcher and filled my tankard. “I told you already. He knew the queen would send someone to find Lady Parry. He left me a message that—”
Shelton made an impatient gesture. “Forget all that. Do you think he has something to do with that woman Sybilla?” He set his big hands on the table. “I’m no dimwit, lad. You came to me only four days past convinced she was still alive, and you barely said three words until we were well on our way here. So, do you think this man who has taken Lady Parry could be an accomplice of hers, that you’re being stalked to avenge her death?”
I did not answer at once. Around us, customers and servers harangued. Shouts from the hutch and raucous laughter collided in the dense atmosphere. Outside on the busy streets, the people went about their business, tending to shops or errands, dragging children by the hand and stopping to exchange news with friends and neighbors—all the ordinary activities of those who live without the double-dealing and soul-crushing deceptions of serving a queen.
I heard Elizabeth in my head: I have never run … In the end, they always find you. It’s not a matter of when but rather how, and who shall disarm whom first.
“Yes,” I said. “I do not know how or why, but I think this man knows about her and has set in motion a dangerous gambit. He set his trap by abducting Lady Parry, leaving a note on her saddle with the same words as the message he gave those men. And he must have sent the box to the queen, for it was tainted with the same type of poison that killed Peregrine. I also found a note hidden in the lid, composed in cipher. We have yet to decipher it, but would you not say that is too many coincidences?”
“Aye, but not proof that he holds you responsible for Sybilla’s death,” said Shelton. “I thought you agreed to not let the past cloud your reason. This would be the time, lad. Whatever gambit this stranger plays—and I have no doubt, gambit it is—if you are wrong about his motive, it could be your undoing. Our undoing.”
“Perhaps. But I must trust my instincts, until I find evidence to the contrary.”
“Just as long as you accept it if you do not,” Shelton replied. He said nothing more as we paid our bill and went to fetch our horses.
* * *
Icy wind flecked with snow gusted as we left Kingston-upon-Hull. Several hours later, we reached the sullen hamlet of Withernsea and asked directions from a peasant on an emaciated mule weighted down with kindling, a black dog skulking at his heels. He pointed us to a narrow road alongside a chalk-gnawed ridge overlooking the North Sea.
I had never seen a body of water like this, roiling onto a bea
ch scattered with jagged spines of rocks, its shallow color burnished by the white light, like a tarnished mirror.
“There’s a roke coming.” Shelton shielded his brow to the blackened horizon.
“Roke?” I frowned.
“A fog local to these parts: fast-moving and treacherous. Within the hour, we will not be able to see our hands in front of our faces and risk our horses losing their footing. Where is that blasted manor?” He grimaced, tugging his scarf up over his nose. “Must be quite a house for them to live all the way out here—and well defended, too. Not a hundred years past, this whole shire was prey to Scots who came over the Marches to steal cattle and pillage.”
Reaching into my doublet, I pulled out the leather tube containing the map Elizabeth had given me and tried to establish our bearings within the scoured landscape around us. I too was prepared for an impressive estate like those I’d known in Hertfordshire; instead, we came upon it quite suddenly—a stark sentinel rearing from a bluff facing the sea, enclosed by a half circle of walls, seeming about to tumble into the crashing waters below, not at all the elaborate edifice I had been expecting.
“This … cannot be it,” I said, as the wind tore at our cloaks and flung salt spray, to the horses’ snorting discontent. But the map confirmed it could be no other.
We had reached Vaughan Hall.
VAUGHAN HALL, WITHERNSEA
Chapter Twelve
We struggled up a road no wider than a goat path, hugging the precipice and buffeted by the wind as the roke rolled in and blanketed us in a shroud. It was unnerving, how swift the fog’s transformative power was. Within minutes the daylight disappeared, the rumble of waves shattering against the rocks the sole distorted sound in a world gone blank as canvas.
A lichen-stained turreted gatehouse, adorned with heraldic beasts worn smooth by the elements, materialized before us, the only entrance through walls that were higher than they had seemed from the distance. I reined in Cinnabar. Square iron gates served as a portcullis, barring our passage. The manor loomed behind it, fronted by bedraggled hedgerows around an outer courtyard, a cluster of smaller, timber-framed outbuildings huddled at the house’s edge.
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