There was love mingled with undeniable lust, but she had always accepted that it was a love without a future, that she would take away with her only memories of lust and its satisfaction. Just that. No more. And now she realized how deeply she had been fooling herself. It
did
matter. Her memories would be sullied irreparably by the knowledge of this part of his past. And she wanted to understand
why
he had done what he’d done.
Owen stared at her for a long minute, a puzzled question in his eyes. Then his gaze hardened suddenly and his mouth thinned.
Who had told her?
“Pay that vile creature what she wants for this child,” Pen demanded, desperate now to get the business over with. Whatever lay now between herself and Owen d’Arcy could not take place here.
“And what of the other two?” he demanded, and his voice was hard-edged, his gaze unpleasant as it rested on her face.
“They have a mother, such as she is,” Pen said, her voice flat and dull. “But I’ll not leave this other one.”
The crone looked between them, her eyes sharp and hungry. “Twelve guineas for the two of ’em.” Her voice became wheedling. “I’ll ’ave trouble on me ’ands when they comes to get ’em, my lord.”
“Pay her! I’ll not negotiate the price of a child’s life,” Pen snapped. She turned and pushed through the door of the scullery and out into the street, clutching her children.
Outside, she took off her cloak and wrapped them both in its thick folds. It was hard to carry them wrapped together but she hoisted them up against her shoulder and, without waiting for Owen, set off down the alley towards the riverbank.
Owen threw money on the table, and as he passed the little girl with the baby he slipped a sixpence into her clawlike hand. More than that he could not do. One could not rescue every half-starved child from the desperate existence in the London alleys. Even Pen seemed to have acknowledged that.
Outside he saw that the lane was empty. With a muttered oath he set off towards the faint light of the riverbank.
Who had told her? Who had given her that twisted version of the truth?
Owen knew she could not have heard the truth. No one knew the truth except himself and his mother. If anyone remembered the scandal now, it was with a shrug. Estelle was long dead, her husband no longer visible at the French court. It was an old and irrelevant story. So who had decided to resurrect it? And
why
?
He caught up with her easily, hampered as she was with her awkward burden. She was drenched, the blue gown pressed to her body. Her hair, no longer protected by the hood of the cloak, had escaped from its pins and tumbled soaked down her back.
He unclasped his cloak and swung it around her shoulders. “Shutting the stable after the horse has bolted,” he muttered. “Give the boys to me.” He took them from her before she could protest, and began to walk fast with them through the rain towards the quay where the ambassador’s barge was still docked.
Pen ran to keep up with him. She jumped after him onto the deck of the barge, and the lantern from the cabin threw a path of light across the decking.
Owen ducked into the cabin with his charges, and Pen, stumbling in her haste, almost fell in after him. The brazier burned brightly; its warmth and the light from the lantern made a magical cave of the small space.
Owen set the children on the floor. He turned to Pen, who, shivering, knelt in front of the boys, unwrapping them from her cloak.
Owen rummaged in a bulkhead cupboard and took out a pile of towels and two blankets. “Here.” He tossed them across to her. His voice was curt, his movements brusque and matter-of-fact. “Dry them first and then get into your own dry clothes.”
He toweled off his own hair before stripping off the wet homespun jerkin he had worn beneath his cloak. His shirt joined it on the floor and he rubbed his torso dry, bending over the warmth of the brazier.
Pen was barely aware of him as she stripped the babies of their shirts, murmuring distressfully at the thinness of their frail bodies. But they didn’t seem bruised or marked in any way and she took some comfort from that. She wrapped each one in a thick blanket and sat them on the velvet-covered bench set into the bulwark.
“I wish we had some food, some milk,
something
to give them.”
“There’s bread and cheese, milk and ale in the cupboard on the other side,” he said, gesturing with his head. “But before you do that get yourself dry. You’ll be no good to either of them with lung fever.”
There was sense in this, and Pen swiftly stripped off her own soaked garments and swathed herself in a towel, reflecting that where she had failed to anticipate a child’s need, Owen had not. Her confusion grew beyond the point where she could begin to untangle the knot.
The children sat solemnly side by side, not making a murmur. They looked shocked, apprehensive, and yet somehow resigned, as if sudden removals in darkest night by strange faces to new places were quite ordinary occurrences in their short lives.
“Here.” Owen handed Pen a flask of aqua vitae and she took a deep gulp, spluttering as the fiery liquid burned her throat, but slowly the warmth spread through her belly and her shivering subsided.
She began to scramble into the clothes she’d been wearing when she’d first stepped onto the barge. They were blissfully dry and warm. Now she noticed that Owen was dressed in dry garments, dark woolen britches, linen shirt, plain woolen doublet.
He helped her with the laces of her stomacher without asking if she needed assistance, again brisk and matter-of-fact, then while she buttoned her sleeves he took out bread and cheese. With his knife he sliced chunks of both and gave them to the children on the bench.
They stared at the offering in wide-eyed wonder, then looked up at Owen, then across to Pen, as if expecting this largesse to be snatched from them as suddenly as it had appeared.
“Eat,” Pen said quietly. She came over to them and knelt smiling before them. “Eat. Aren’t you hungry?”
They nodded in unison and again in unison crammed bread and cheese into their mouths.
“They haven’t said a word,” Pen said. “Do you think they can talk?”
“I’ve no idea. I don’t suppose people have talked much to them,” Owen responded.
Pen flinched at the cold indifference of his tone. They would have to have a reckoning. But not now. Not when she had two cold, starving, confused two-year-olds on her hands.
Owen continued in the same tone. “What do you want to do with them now? We can’t keep the ambassador’s barge tied up at Southwark steps for very much longer.”
She had not thought carefully beyond this moment when she would have her child safe. It seemed obvious that she must take her son to her mother . . . to his grandparents. Guinevere and Hugh would keep him safe. But how was she to take him . . . them . . . alone in the middle of the night? And she needed to be back in Greenwich by the morning, when she had promised to help Mary escape from the palace that was now her prison.
That escape had now become a matter of personal urgency for Pen. Mary’s support could make all the difference when it came to establishing her son’s identity. As heir to a throne occupied by a dying king, Mary should have the power to declare Philip’s son the legitimate earl. But while Northumberland kept her a virtual prisoner she had neither power nor influence. Once she had regained her freedom she would gather the people’s support. They were absolutely loyal to Mary, and would rally to her with a power that would withstand all Northumberland’s scheming.
But first she had to be her own mistress, and for that she needed Owen’s help.
Pen turned away from Owen and back to the children, offering them milk, averting her face from Owen’s intent scrutiny.
Regardless of what she knew of him, regardless of this breach that yawned between them, could she enlist the spy’s help just once more? If his government was genuinely interested in supporting Mary’s claim to the throne then he would surely help, whatever differences existed between them.
Owen leaned against the table in the center of the cabin, crossing his legs at the ankles. “I have to give the boatmen instructions. Do we return to Greenwich?” he prompted with a touch of impatience.
“Yes . . . yes, we must,” Pen said. “I don’t know what else to do. I must take the children to my mother at Holborn, but I can’t do it until I have helped the princess get away from Greenwich.”
She set down the milk and turned back to him, rising slowly to her feet. “You know as well as I do that Northumberland is keeping her an unofficial prisoner. He is turning her brother against her and she lives in fear of the Tower every minute of the day. Any day Northumberland could succeed in persuading the king to impeach her. If she’s out of his hands he’ll find it much harder to do that. I need you to help me secure her freedom. Once she’s free, as heir to the throne, as queen on Edward’s death, and he cannot live much longer, she will be able to have Philip’s son legally acknowledged.”
She waited, her hands at her sides, her eyes never leaving his face. When he said nothing she went on into his silence, her voice flat and determined, “If your government truly supports Mary’s cause, then you will help me.”
She threw the challenge at him. Would he now deny that the French interest was no longer served by supporting the princess? Would he tell her now that he had been deceiving her all along?
Her body felt heavy as lead, her spirit as disheartened as it had ever been. Even when she glanced over at the bed and looked upon her child, there was no lightening of her load. She knew nothing of this man. His body, yes. But the man himself, of what drove the man, Owen d’Arcy, she knew absolutely nothing.
Owen did not respond to the challenge. “You can do nothing encumbered with children,” he declared. “I will leave you at Greenwich and I will take the children to your mother. Then we will talk of Mary’s position.”
“No!”
Pen exclaimed involuntarily. “No, you cannot take the children.” How could she allow someone who had abandoned his own children to be responsible for hers?
“And why not?” His voice now was pure ice; his expression set off a thrill of alarm in the pit of her stomach.
Hastily she said, “Now that I’ve found my son, how can I let him out of my sight?” But she read his disbelief in his eyes. He had known what lay behind her impulsive rejection.
Owen’s mouth was twisted, his eyes dark and fathomless as pitch. He turned from her and called to the boatmen, “Greenwich!”
“Aye, m’lord.” There was a flurry of activity and the barge swung into midstream.
Owen resumed his position leaning against the table. “Well?” The one word fell like a stone into the heavy silence.
He was demanding an explanation, and Pen couldn’t find the words to lay before him an accusation of such enormity.
She turned back to the children. “I think you know.” Her voice was low as she laid the babies down on the velvet and covered them in blankets. “Your wife . . . your children?”
“They are no business of yours,” he declared, and there was a contemptuous edge to his voice that astonished her. It was as if he were placing
her
in the wrong. He was offering neither denial nor defense. She hadn’t asked for this tale of his past, but it had to be common knowledge in certain circles, else how could Robin have discovered it?
“No,” she agreed with a welcome flash of anger, her voice ringing with sarcasm. “Of course they have nothing to do with you and me. How could your past have anything to do with your present? But there is much that I understand now.”
“You?”
he questioned with insulting incredulity. “
You?
You understand nothing. . . .
Nothing!
” He snatched up his wet cloak and left the cabin.
Pen sat on the bench opposite the children. They seemed to be asleep.
What didn’t she understand?
She knew that Robin could not have made up such a story. She knew his sources would be reliable. And it all fitted so neatly. All the little puzzles and the bigger mysteries, all were somehow explained by such a tragedy. And all the guilt and regret in the world couldn’t undo such a tragedy.
She got up and went to look at her son. He was easily identifiable from his companion, whose hair as far as she could tell through the dirt was probably carrot-colored. She bent over her child and drank him in, waiting for the moment of revelation, the instant of absolute certainty, the flood of the love that knows no limits.
Finally she turned away, still unsatisfied by her response. She took up her cloak and went up on deck. Owen was standing in the stern, looking back at the flickering lights of the receding city.
What didn’t she understand?
She had to know. She loved him . . .
did
love him. Even if they had no future, she had to understand.
It took courage to approach him, every line of his body was forbidding.
“Why, then?” she asked, standing just behind him. “Why did you do it?”
He didn’t turn around but his voice was hard as iron, sharp as his rapier. “You know
nothing
of my world. How dare you presume to judge! Go below!”
She heard the dreadful anguish in his voice and knew that she had done something terribly wrong. And now she didn’t know how to put it right. If he wouldn’t talk to her, how could she put it right? If he wouldn’t explain, how could she understand?
She returned to the cabin and the sleeping children, and sat still on the bench, hands folded into her lap, waiting until the barge nudged the dock at Greenwich, and the sky was touched with the gray promise of morning.
Robin awoke with a sudden start. He realized that the gentle chiming of the brass clock on the mantel had shaken him from his light and disturbed doze. He glanced at the clock. It had just struck five.
There was still no Pen. But at some time during the long reaches of the night, his mind had lit upon a motive for Northumberland’s eagerness to marry his son to the king’s cousin. It was a wild, treasonous idea. But it suited Northumberland’s overarching ambition, the deviousness of his sharp intellect.