The King's Daughter (19 page)

Her stomach growled. She was very hungry.

She got up. With fingers stiff from the cold, she pulled her fur-lined cloak tightly around her and moved to the table. Across it, the mercenary ignored her and went on eating. There was a stool by Isabel’s leg, but she remained uneasily standing, unwilling to sit so near him despite her resolution not to be afraid of him. The woman left the fire and fetched two mugs of ale and brought them to the table. She also tossed down another wooden spoon for Isabel. Isabel realized that she was expected to eat from the same bowl as the mercenary.

“Thank you,” she said, trying to sound sincere. Expressionless, the woman shuffled back to the hearth. The children on the floor began to stir. One, a mouse-eyed little boy with freckles, sat up and stared intently at Isabel. The woman scowled back over her shoulder as if expecting to witness Isabel’s rude refusal of the breakfast.

Uncomfortable under their scrutiny, Isabel pulled the stool to her and sat. She winced, still sore from the defilement she had suffered from the jailer. At the memory of Mosse, her stomach lurched. Her cheeks burned with humiliation and anger. She caught the mercenary glancing up at her, and the recollection that he had seen it all, had watched everything Mosse had done to her, sent a jolt of mortification through her that was as sharp as the soreness. She quickly looked down and pretended her boot required some adjustment.

When she stole another look at the mercenary he was again busily devouring the gruel between gulps of ale. It was as though none of the awful events of their escape yesterday had disquieted him. They had terrified her. She shivered, remembering. As soon as she had unlocked his chains he had unleashed chaos in the jail. Moving through the ward with purpose and precision, he had set several fires, then unlocked the prisoners, who ran amok through the corridors and up the stairs. She saw the mob trample a boy, and when a turnkey attacked the mercenary with a dagger she saw the mercenary smash the turnkey’s head against a wall. But despite the frenzy all around them the mercenary had remained astonishingly cool-headed. He had waited—and restrained
her
—until the other prisoners were swarming through the castle yard and drawing all the jailer’s men after them. Only then had he quietly retrieved his sword and dagger from the jailer’s empty chamber and led Isabel out through a side door. Avoiding the guards rushing for the stable, he had untethered her mare by the jailer’s door, mounted and pulled Isabel up behind him—for she had come on a man’s saddle, expecting to ride out with her father—then had taken the horse out of the castle precincts at a walk, unnoticed in the melee.

They had ridden for mile after mile over iron-hard tracks that jarred her backbone, through ice-rattling woods, past frost-killed hop fields over which the wind swept so mercilessly Isabel had to squint, even behind the mercenary’s broad back. But worse than the extreme discomfort was the hollow feeling inside her. She felt so alone, so bereft of family. Before going to the jail to try to free her father, she had taken her mother to the harbor and seen that she was safely carried aboard ship, though she was still fevered, still drifting in and out of consciousness. After giving last-minute instructions to Mistress Farquharson, the calm nurse she’d hired, Isabel had kissed her mother good-bye through her tears. Her mother was now on her way to Antwerp, and Isabel prayed that once resting at the family’s house there, taken care of by Adam and helped by their many Antwerp friends, her mother would rally and recover. But her family had splintered apart. Adam on the far side of the Channel. Her father in a London prison. Her mother sailing away from her.

Eventually, though, her mind, recoiling from the last days’ brutal events, and her body, aching from the jailer’s violence, had felt numb. When she and the mercenary finally stopped at this alehouse, she had sunk into the oblivion of sleep almost as soon as her shoulders had touched the floor.

She watched the mercenary now as he ate his breakfast. He was intensely purposeful even in that. She did not know what crime had brought him to be held in chains at Colchester jail, and she did not want to know. Nor could she pretend any regret over Mosse’s death at his hands. Yet his cold-bloodedness chilled her. Still, she had to admit that he was capable and ruthlessly efficient. If anyone could find her father and rescue him, it would be this man.

“Eat,” he said. He was halfway through the porridge. Isabel noticed his strong, even, white teeth.

She looked down. “I’m not hungry,” she lied. She had had nothing since leaving Colchester except a slab of wheaten bread and some flat ale when they’d arrived here, but the gray gruel looked revolting.

“Eat anyway,” he said. “You will need the strength.”

It sounded like a command. Obeying, she picked up her spoon. But her gaze drifted to the window. Had the weather let up enough to carry on? she wondered. The closed shutters made it impossible to tell, but she had noticed that the moaning wind of the night had quieted. She swallowed, gathering the courage to speak; on the road she and the mercenary had not exchanged more than ten words. In a voice lowered to prevent the others from hearing, she asked, “Do you think … will we be able to reach London today?”

He did not look up, but he answered between spoonfuls, “Yes.”

“Do you have any idea which prison they’ve taken him to?”

“No.”

“Then we must search them all.”

“Yes.”

Isabel had no more questions. Struck by the enormity of the task ahead, she dipped her spoon into the bowl. The porridge was lumps of gluey pease. It tasted of rancid pork fat. She forced it down. The two of them ate in silence.

The cottage door clattered open. The brewer, a burly, bearded man, came in carrying two buckets of water. His shoulders were hunched from the cold even under his hooded sheepskin coat, and he stomped snow off his boots before carrying the water to his wife at the hearth. On the way he kicked the freckled child’s leg. “Look lively, boy,” he said. “Lord of the manor’s on his way. He’s stopped at Widow Dowd’s door for a word, but soon’s he gets here he’ll want his brew ready in the skins.” The boy jumped up to attend to his chores. The two smaller children scuttled out of their father’s way. The old man in the corner snored on.

The brewer nodded to Isabel and said, “I’ve watered your horse, m’lady.”

“Thank you, Master Brewer,” she said. Her eyes were drawn back to the mercenary. She had seen a scowl flit over his face at the mention of the approaching visitor. She understood. The lord of the manor could be the local magistrate, and the mercenary was a fugitive from justice.

He stood. “I will saddle the mare,” he said quietly to Isabel. “Finish here. Quickly.” He quaffed down the last of his ale, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and went out the door to the byre.

Isabel nervously paid the brewer for the food and the night’s shelter and thanked the silent woman for the breakfast. She made a quick visit to the privy behind the cottage. The air was bitterly cold, but she was glad to see that the day promised to be bright and calm. A dog ran barking down the hamlet’s narrow main street. Isabel hurried to the three-sided byre. A cow noisily munched hay. Her mare, Woodbine, was saddled—but the mercenary was nowhere to be seen. Suspicion shot through Isabel.

Her first thought was to check her saddlebags. She had left no money in them—it was safe in the purse at her waist—but her other belongings were here. She opened one saddlebag, then rushed around the horse to check the other. Everything was as she had left it.

Glancing across the mare’s back, she caught sight of the mercenary moving out from behind the cow with the horse’s bridle in his hands. He was looking at her with a small, grim smile as though he knew she had suspected him. And it was true. After all, the ten pounds she had promised to pay him—though all she could afford with the inevitable expenses of London ahead—was hardly a fortune. Besides, she was asking him to incur great risk in the venture. How could she help wondering if, now that he was free, he might have second thoughts about assisting her? She could not possibly stop him from stealing her belongings and decamping if he wanted to, even now. Or going on to London with her and then stealing the horse and leaving her stranded. But as she watched him fit the bridle and tug tight the cinch under the horse’s belly, ready to carry on, she felt a pang of remorse at her suspicions. How could they work together if she thought such things of him? She
must
trust him.

She rearranged her belongings, paltry though they were, and refastened the saddlebag. She had come away with little more than her mother’s book, a change of clothes, and a fresh shirt and tunic for her father. She had not expected to need much else; had expected, in fact, that her bribe of money to the jailer would free her father and send him to join her mother and brother in Antwerp, while she would carry on to London and help the rebellion. Then Martin, victorious with Wyatt, would come for her. She felt bitterly ashamed now at her naïveté.

“Peter Brewer!” a man’s voice called. Isabel moved toward the byre’s entrance. The shout had come from a man on horseback approaching at a trot along the road. A compact middle-aged squire, he halted his horse not far from the byre and called again toward the cottage door, “Peter, I’m in haste this morning. Can’t stop in.”

The brewer was already hustling out the cottage door, a bulging leather flask of ale in his hands. “Here’s one, m’lord,” he said pleasantly as he hoisted the drink up to the horseman. “My boy’s just filling t’other. Won’t take but a moment.”

“A moment’s all I’ve got,” the man grumbled as he yanked a glove off with his teeth and tied the flask onto his saddle.

“Why the rush, m’lord?”

“Got to finish my business in Chelmsford by noon,” the man said, clearly annoyed. “Sheriff’s in a lather over some felon escaped from Colchester. Wants me back to help in the search.”

Isabel noticed that the mercenary had moved into the shadows behind a post near her. The post screened him from the horseman’s view.

The brewer looked up at the squire and scratched his chin. “Colchester’s a long way off to be stirring up folks hereabouts, m’lord.”

“Aye. But it seems the blackguard murdered the jailer. Let loose the rest of the prisoners, too. Some foreign blighter, they say. Spaniard, I believe.” He shook his head. “God deliver us from foreigners, eh, Peter?”

“Right enough, m’lord,” the brewer agreed. He scowled back toward his front door. “Where’s that boy got to? I’ll just go hurry him along, m’lord.” He stumped back into the cottage.

Isabel watched the squire as he idly looked around the hamlet’s dirty street, waiting for his ale. “My lord!” she called out suddenly. “I would speak with you—”

The mercenary yanked her into the shadows, twisted her to face him by wrenching her arm back, pinned her to him, and raised his dagger to her throat. Isabel froze.

“Yes?” the horseman called toward the byre, peering toward its apparent emptiness. “Who’s there?”

The mercenary wrenched Isabel’s arm higher up her back. She gasped at the pain. The dagger glinted by the side of her jaw. He was crushing her so tightly against him she could feel the thudding of his heart against her breast. Her own heart pounded in terror. His face loomed over hers, a furious intensity tightening his features.

“Is someone in there?” the horseman called toward the byre. He led his horse a few steps closer and stopped, waiting.

The mercenary’s steel-gray eyes flashed a warning to Isabel not to make a sound. His dagger point touched her jaw. She could not even swallow. She was frightened, very frightened. But as she struggled just to catch her breath in his vise-like grip she felt anger also swell inside her. His hold was painful and humiliating. And she’d had enough of men mauling her. Suddenly her anger boiled above her fear. She jutted her jaw above the dagger in reckless defiance of him. “My lord!” she called out loudly.

The mercenary blinked in surprise. Isabel saw the realization flicker in his eyes: he could not harm her now or the man outside would find him. His grip on her slackened. She instantly pulled away. Once free, the sunlight at the byre’s entrance protected her even more, for he did not dare leave the shadows.

“Good day to you, sir,” she called, stepping out boldly toward the horseman. “I would ask a question of you. Do you hear news of the uprising?”

“Indeed, yes, mistress,” the man answered, slightly taken aback by her sudden appearance. “Forgive me, I did not at first see you.” He frowned back at the byre. “Are you stopping here?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, trying to calm her breathing. “I am on my way to visit my sister, but the bad weather forced us to take shelter for the night, me and … my manservant. The brewer has been most hospitable. I am just leaving.” She waited for the information she craved. Even the thought of the mercenary and his blade near her back could not quell her hunger for news of the uprising, and she had sensed by the horseman’s words to the brewer that he would be in sympathy with the rebels, or at least with their aim of halting Spanish domination. If only he would stop looking her up and down and tell her. “Pray, sir,” she prompted him, “what
is
the news?”

“Ah, yes. Well, mistress, the talk is that Sir Thomas Wyatt’s army has taken Rochester. And all without a single man loosing a single arrow.”

“You mean … Rochester opened to him?”

“It did, indeed.
There’s
news for you, eh?” Isabel realized that he would not dare speak with open approval of Wyatt’s treasonous action, not to a stranger. But his admiration for the bold act was plain enough in his twinkling eyes.

The brewer came out and handed the squire another flask. The squire paid him. The brewer, after nodding to them both, went back in.

“Does your sister live in Chelmsford, mistress?” the squire asked, fitting the flask into a saddlebag. “If so, I am going there, and it would be my pleasure to escort you.”

“Thank you, sir, but my journey takes me another way.”

“Well,” he said, adjusting his reins, “you’ve got a fair day for it. God speed to you.”