The Maiden's Hand

by Susan Wiggs

  The only man who wanted a Catholic heir more than Bonner was Wynter himself. The seed had been planted long ago, in the mind of a bewildered boy abandoned by his father. It had been nurtured by the brutal splendor of his childhood, growing with the years spent in the shadow of his beautiful, bitter mother.

  Doña Elena had been as remote and cool as an alabaster madonna. She had taught Wynter two things above all else: to serve God and to seek revenge.

  By taking Lark’s child and giving it to the queen, Wynter could accomplish both. More than that, he would finally win complete control over Lark.

  He had always loved her; couldn’t she see that? But she had to submit to him. He had been trying for years to master her will, first by appealing to her craving for affection, then by trying to convince her that her worth was measured only by his esteem for her.

  Until Oliver de Lacey had come along, Wynter had had hopes for success. But the arrant knave had built up Lark’s aplomb, had honed a fine edge on her conviction. In more ways than one, she had slipped from Wynter’s grasp. Her defiant behavior in the tower room had proved that.

  He glared down at a blister rising on the back of his hand. He must bring Lark back to him. He would bend her will to his. His honor depended on it.

  Wynter resented Bonner’s part in the plan to keep England bound to the True Faith. Presenting the queen with a newborn babe was simply too brilliant an idea to share. Making a beloved sovereign’s fondest wish come true was an honor Wynter meant to claim all on his own.

  “The woman’s a danger to our purposes.” Bonner paced, his robes swishing on the Turkey carpets of his opulent apartment. “She must not be found by anyone but you and your servants. Is that understood?”

  “Of course, my lord bishop.”

  “It would be an unmitigated disaster if she were. She is young, with child, and noble. Need I say more?”

  “No, my lord bishop.”

  “When she is found,” Bonner said, selecting a fat orange from the bowl on the table, “see that she dies in childbirth.”

  Lying in general was a sin, and lying to one’s sovereign queen was out of the question.

  On her knees in front of Queen Mary, Lark told the truth about her deathbed promise to Spencer and her hasty marriage to Oliver de Lacey.

  “De Lacey?” the queen asked, her voice tired and thready. She leaned forward over the swollen mound of her belly. She was not with child; the protuberance was misshapen and unhealthy looking. Weary lines of melancholy scored her sagging cheeks.

  She was dying. Lark knew this with chilly certainty.

  “The de Laceys of Lynacre.” Lark tried not to seem impatient by casting glances over her shoulder. “His father is the earl of Lynley.”

  “I know. Stephen de Lacey was last known to have taken to the high seas in pursuit of his daughter and a certain Protestant rebel. Would you know anything about that, my lady?”

  Lark’s heart sank. Her knees ached from pressing into the stone floor. The distant drumbeat of the procession to Smithfield throbbed into the silence. Rather than panic, she felt cold determination. She would defy the queen of England, if she had to, in order to reach Oliver in time. The dilemma was leaving the palace before Wynter seized her again.

  The queen shook her head. “Do not answer that. The truth would condemn you in the eyes of the law. A lie would condemn you in the eyes of God.”

  Lark expelled her sigh of relief quietly. She felt no awe at meeting her sovereign for the first time. Instead she felt a strange empathy for a woman whose unrelenting dogma had robbed English men and women of their freedom and some of their lives.

  The queen’s hands were never still; she held a rosary of coral beads wound through her fingers, and she twisted the strand constantly, restlessly. Lark had the sense that some sort of unfinished business haunted Queen Mary.

  “Ma’am, are you quite well?” Lark asked at length. “Shall I call for someone?”

  “Nay.” Mary indicated a glass bell at her side. “Someone will come when I ring. I came here to be alone. To be away from the hovering physicks and hand-wringing women.”

  Faint shouts drifted in through the unglazed window. The corners of the queen’s mouth turned down. “Do you know why the crowds gather outside the palace gates?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Aye, you do, but like the rest of them, you are afraid to tell me so. They’re waiting for me to die.”

  Lark bit her lip and stared at the stone floor. The ancient cracks were filled with brown dust.

  “Some of my nobles—I suppose I must no longer call them my nobles—have gone to Hatfield already. I wonder how she is receiving them.” Mary’s knuckles shone white and taut as she clenched and unclenched her hands around the rosary beads.

  Footsteps approached, ringing in the passageway outside the chapel. Lark froze; then, without asking leave, she stood and backed into the shadow of a stone pillar.

  Through small, dark Tudor eyes, Mary watched her. Lark held her breath, wondering if the queen would call out and betray her.

  She kept silent. The sound of the footsteps subsided.

  “Ma’am, my husband has been condemned to die today,” Lark said.

  Mary lifted her chin. “I know that. I am ill, but not ignorant.”

  Daring to further test the queen’s forbearance, Lark said, “I beg you for a reprieve.”

  “Your husband is a confessed heretic.”

  He had confessed only to keep them from questioning her, Lark knew that now.

  “I cannot interfere in the sacred work of the church,” said Mary. “Surely you understand that.”

  “Then I weep for England,” Lark burst out, furious and uncaring now. “I weep for a country where good men are sent to die and evil ones are advanced at court.”

  Mary’s thin, graying eyebrows lifted. “Who?” she demanded. “If you would cast aspersions on a member of my court, I would know his name.”

  Just for a moment, Lark hesitated. It was risky. But anger spurred her to blurt out Wynter’s name.

  Mary absorbed the news with mild interest in her waxen face. “His mother, Elena, was a great favorite of my own mother. Wynter has been a devoted subject—to me and to the True Faith.”

  “But when does devotion turn to obsession? Would you want an adviser who would steal a baby from its mother’s arms?”

  Mary seemed to catch fire, bending forward like a thin flame in a stiff breeze. “Why would you accuse him of so pernicious a plot?”

  “Because he threatened it.” Lark rested her hands on her middle.

  “Christ have mercy.” Mary leaned back against the priedieu. “Such rumors have gone about London since the day I married Philip of Spain.” She stared at the guttering candle on the altar. Her face seemed to soften. Lark recognized the look on the queen’s face. Poor Mary—sick, abandoned, dying, she still loved her husband.

  “Even now, Wynter is searching the palace for me,” Lark said.

  “Is he?” Mary rang her crystal bell.

  Lark nearly screamed in fury and frustration. The queen had merely been toying with her, delaying her. Now she would be seized, given into the care of a madman, and—

  “Make haste,” the queen said to the bodyguard who appeared in the chapel. “And let no one see you.” She lifted her gaze to Lark. “You’re to have an escort and an eight-man barge at your disposal to take you to whatever destination you desire.”

  Lark stared at the queen. The silent message that passed between them was unmistakable. The queen would not put a stop to the execution, but she would not keep Lark from trying.

  “Come,” she said, holding out her frail arms. “Embrace me.”

  She felt no more substantial than a wisp of straw, Lark thought as she gently clasped the queen by the shoulders. The smell that clung to her was familiar; Lark knew it from Spencer’s last days. It was a feeble, musty perfume. The smell of death.

  “Godspeed,” Mary whispered so that none but Lark could
hear. “And when your babe comes, perhaps you could name him Philip.” That painfully wistful voice would haunt Lark all her years.

  Shaken by the encounter, she soon found herself on her way to Smithfield. She prayed she would not be too late.

  As he was led to the burning grounds at Smithfield, Oliver seemed, even to himself, to be a different man. It was a great irony that once before he had been taken to his execution.

  But oh, how changed he was since then. He had been loutish and shameless, pleading for his life. Today some steadfast core held his dignity intact.

  Lark had given him that. He wondered if she knew. Her love had transcended care and fear, putting solace and acceptance in its place.

  He drew comfort from the fact that the young evangelist Richard Speed was safe and married to Natalya. Lark, too, would be safe in the bosom of the boisterous, loving de Lacey brood.

  Life would go on. The Princess Elizabeth would take the throne; Lark would bring forth their child.

  He wondered how long she would grieve for him.

  A howling wind whipped over the throng of spectators at Smithfield. Oliver looked across the grounds and saw his fate: the hooded executioner and his masked assistant, a pile of kindling and rushes heaped around a blackened stake thrusting up from a pit of sand.

  For you, Dickon.

  The thought came out of the dim, distant past and took him by surprise. He had never known Dickon. Oliver realized that all his life he had carried a burden of guilt. His brother had died. Oliver had lived on.

  He barely heard a droning voice reading the charges, all the outlandish crimes to which Oliver had willingly confessed. He paid no heed to the chanting of prayers, the swish of swinging censers, the low roar of the crowd. He refused his final chance to recant—laughed in the priest’s face, in fact.

  Many jeered and cursed him, but others cried out for a reprieve. The world was changing. Men and women were learning to take a stand. One day their numbers would be so formidable that not even death could stifle them.

  Soldiers took him to the stake and raised his manacled hands high. A thick chain went around his chest. To beat back a sudden welling of horror, Oliver caught the eye of one of the men and winked.

  The man looked away and crossed himself. Oliver felt the cold wind streak across his face. He heard a bellowed order, saw two torches touch the kindling at the edge of the sandpit. The crowd was a vast sea of faces and noise, yet he had never been more alone.

  In absolute solitude he would make this journey. His destination was the mystery of the ages.

  He heard the firewood crackling. The quick little flames were still at the edge of the pit, perhaps six feet away, but creeping closer, eating up the fuel. He wondered if he would be able to stand the pain.

  Somewhere in the mob, a child began to cry.

  Oliver told himself the agony would be fleeting.

  The hiss and crackle of the kindling crescendoed to a roar.

  So this was it. The waiting was over. His final journey would begin here, now.

  To his surprise, a prayer—wordless and heartfelt—poured through his mind.

  Much less to his surprise, he felt like vomiting.

  No. You’ve prepared yourself for this. At least do this. For the sake of your child, die well.

  Prepared. He wondered if that were even possible. Horrible, pleading words crowded his throat. He became a wild animal, instinctively terrified of the flames taking hold at his feet.

  So he would fail after all, opening his mouth to recant and beg them to strangle him instead.

  Strength was as simple as summoning an image of Lark. He grew tough, stubborn, more a man than he had ever been. And deep inside him, in a secret, dark place, dwelt a part of him that hungered to know the deepest mystery of all. The final thrill.

  A stiff wind snatched at the flames before they engulfed Oliver. With the hot breath of the fire on his face, he closed his eyes and thought again of Lark and the child he would never know.

  “Hell and damnation,” muttered the executioner.

  “Wind’s not going to soften today,” said his assistant with a nervous stutter.

  Oliver opened his eyes and gave the hooded men a censorious look. “I’ve resigned myself to becoming a martyr. At this rate we could be all afternoon at it.”

  “Bring me gunpowder,” the executioner yelled. His voice was hoarse, his accent common; he was probably a convict offered reprieve in exchange for turning murderer. He seemed a young man, but within the slits of his hood, his eyes appeared ancient.

  The crowd cheered at the mention of gunpowder. It was used when fire alone would not suffice, and it added great drama to the spectacle. Avid faces peered through the feeble threads of smoke. People pressed against the rail at the edge of the pit.

  “Death to the heretic, Oliver de Lacey!” someone shouted.

  “Oh, spare me from the curses of idiots,” Oliver yelled back. “Fie, sir, you have the wit of an elf.”

  “You’ll burn in hell,” the man bellowed.

  “Kiss my breech.” Oliver regretted that he could not accompany the words with an appropriate gesture.

  “Glory to God in the highest!” called a new voice.

  And many people, many more than Oliver had expected, called for a reprieve.

  “Burn in hell, Oliver de Lacey,” screeched an old crone.

  He squinted at her through the wisps of smoke. For a moment her eyes startled him, for they were the same wide, rainy gray as—He shook his head. There was no resemblance.

  The unwashed hag, her teeth black and sparse, cursed him again, shaking her fist. “Burn in hell, Oliver de Lacey!”

  “Get thee to a barnyard with the other molting geese, old mother,” he said, then let his gaze sweep the pressing mob. “What terrible crime did I commit that this must be my last vision on earth?”

  The crowd roared with laughter.

  Oliver could not resist playing to them. “Most martyrs get to see visions of a host of angels. I get a vile, irksome scold. Jesu! Someone bring a shield to hide her face!”

  By that time the executioner had set fat bags of gunpowder on the crackling wood. One of the sacks ignited with a hiss.

  Oliver gritted his teeth, bracing himself to be torn apart by the explosion.

  A fount of yellow smoke billowed upward. The smoke was as thick as a velvet curtain, rising dark and solid before Oliver’s eyes. The screeching harridan, and gradually the rest of the crowd, disappeared from view.

  Oliver closed his smarting eyes. He had never seen gunpowder produce such thick, sparkless smoke.

  Like a last, low blow, the breathlessness started. Ah. So the sickness would kill him after all. Why had he thought he could cheat it? It was almost a comfort to be slain by a familiar enemy rather than a strange one.

  He felt himself slipping down and down the narrow black passageway. He had been here before. But that time there had been a pinprick of brightness to light his way back.

  Now all was black and infinitely empty.

  He used his last strength to whisper a single word: “Lark!”

  Slipping under the rail, Lark plunged into the bank of smoke. It rose so thick from the bags of powder Belinda had prepared that it was like stepping behind a screen. Her tattered robe, bought from a beggar woman for the price of a silver shilling, caught sparks from the flames.

  “Get back, you flea-witted old drab!” a drunkard called.

  “That gunpowder’s about to blow!” yelled someone else. A low roar of confusion buzzed from the spectators.

  Lark could no longer see the crowd. “Kit!” She ignored the hecklers. “Kit, are you there?”

  “I’m here.” Enshrouded by the yellow fog, he sounded breathless. “I think it worked. Jesu! He’s unconscious!” Looking frightened and anonymous in his executioner’s mask and hood, Kit had already unchained Oliver.

  His slim assistant, similarly hooded, choked out a sob. “He’s dead already!”

  “No, Belin
da!” Lark spat, furious with terror. “Hurry. The smoke bombs won’t last forever.” The three of them took longer than they had planned, for they had not counted on Oliver being immobile. They wrestled him into the most concealing garment they’d been able to find—a monk’s robes.

  Kit and Belinda cast off their black hoods and masks and let the fire burn the garments. “Make way!” Lark screeched, bullying a path in the crowd with her cane. “This clerk is ill! Make way! He needs air!”

  Lark prayed that in the confusion no one would see that they crept seemingly out of a cloud. She glanced back over her shoulder. Huge, impenetrable billows of yellow smoke continued to pour from the sacks of false gunpowder. Bless Belinda. She had remembered her formula for sparkless smoke.

  Kit carried Oliver in his arms like a child. Or a dead man.

  Please let him be all right, Lark thought as they rushed past St. Bartholomew’s. Please, please, please.

  “It’s a bloody miracle!” someone yelled.

  Certain they had been found out, Lark prepared to run. She looked back. The smoke had cleared sufficiently to reveal the naked stake.

  “The hand of God snatched him up to heaven,” someone proclaimed.

  “Praise Jesus Christ!”

  “Not even leaving his mortal remains for relics!”

  “We are blessed this day!”

  “It is a miracle!”

  People fell to their knees. Oliver was declared a martyr, and many converted on the spot to the Reformed faith. Fearful, bewildered priests waved their hands and exhorted the people to stay calm, trying unsuccessfully to stifle the adulation.

  As they left the field and delved into the shadows of the city wall along Fleet Ditch, Lark felt the strangest sensation. A twist deep in her belly. A gush of warmth.

  Belinda, agile in her tight black leggings and tunic, put her arms around Lark. “You look terrible.”

  “It has been a long day,” Lark said faintly. Then she remembered her costume. The blackened wax she had put on her teeth tasted foul. The beggar woman’s robes held a terrible odor. “Is Oliver all right?”