The Queen's Exiles (19 page)

“Right. Come on.” He didn’t trust the man, but if he had even a shred of information about how to get Kate and Robert, Adam wanted it. They made their way past the knots of villagers and reached the churchyard wall. The lych gate was open for the christening party who lingered, chattering, by the church door. Adam followed Tyrone in through the lych gate and they walked together along the path through the graveyard. A crow lifted from a tombstone, wings flapping.

“Here is good,” Adam said the moment they’d turned the corner of the church and were out of sight of the villagers. “Now tell me. How can I get my children out?”

“Shhh.” Tyrone’s eyes flicked to a spot behind Adam.

Adam glanced over his shoulder. An old couple had left the christening party and were moving toward them, eyeing him and Tyrone. The couple were apparently heading for a grave across the grass. They shuffled on. When they were out of sight behind the rows of tombstones, Adam turned back.

He saw Tyrone’s knife just in time. The blade glinted in a savage underhand stab. Adam’s heart jolted and he kicked the knife from Tyrone’s hand. It flew through the air and speared the grass. Tyrone lunged for it, but Adam tripped him and he tumbled.

Adam whipped out his own dagger from his belt. Tyrone jumped up and charged him with such force he almost knocked him down. As Adam stumbled, Tyrone grappled his wrist that held the blade. They wrestled on their feet, arms straining, Tyrone struggling to get the dagger, Adam struggling to turn the blade. Locked in the power struggle, they crashed against a tombstone, knocking Adam backward, off-balance. The tombstone scraped his cheek as he fell with a thud on his back, the breath knocked from him. Tyrone leapt on top of him and snatched the dagger. He pinned Adam’s arms to the ground with one hand and one foot. He raised the dagger high to plunge it into Adam’s throat.

Willing a surge of strength Adam wrenched his arm free and grabbed Tyrone’s wrist. He hacked Tyrone’s hand against the tombstone’s edge. He heard the wrist bone snap. Tyrone cried out and the dagger tumbled. Adam snatched it and lifted it and rammed the blade into Tyrone’s side.

Tyrone’s face above him contorted. Adam yanked the blade out. Tyrone groped for his bleeding side. Adam stabbed again. A trickle of blood seeped over Tyrone’s lips. His eyes rolled in their sockets. He collapsed onto Adam.

Adam pushed him off. He got to his feet, the bloody dagger in his hand. He twisted around. Had anyone seen?

There was no one. Tombstones. Silence. Blood from Tyrone’s body seeping into the grass.

Adam’s hand was not quite steady as he swiped the blade on Tyrone’s jerkin to clean off the blood. He sheathed it at his belt. There was a fire of pain in his shoulder. Dampness soaking through his shirt, his almost-healed wound bleeding afresh.

He turned and quickly walked away. Across the graveyard, then through the lych gate. He heard faint laughter. The christening party. He kept walking, making for the path that would take him back to the boat. He could not stay in the village. As soon as Tyrone’s body was found they’d be looking for him. The woman selling cheese had spoken to him. The men sawing the beech bough had watched him when he’d arrived.

He would slip out of the village and get to the boat and wait aboard for Fenella. She would arrive by nightfall and the moment she did they would weigh anchor and sail out of the cove. They’d be free of this country and soon in England.

He was on the path, wiping a trickle of blood from his scraped cheek, and was walking toward the men sawing the bough, keeping his pace steady so he wouldn’t attract their interest, when a voice behind him shouted, “Stop!”

He stiffened. Maybe the command wasn’t meant for him.

“Stop, sir, please!”

Sir.
He halted. Turned. It was the ostler. He was breathing hard from hurrying, wiping a hand over his bald head. “Glad I am I caught you, sir. My wife says this came for you yesterday evening.” He handed him a paper, folded and dirty from its journey. Adam opened it.

He tried to make sense of it. F.D. It could only be her. Fenella Doorn. But . . . staying? He felt a needle of pain in his chest, not from his wound but from her words.
My services?

Voices. He looked up. Beyond the ostler the old couple he’d seen in the graveyard were shuffling past the garden of hollyhocks. They seemed to be arguing, the man pointing at Adam, the woman tugging his raised sleeve as if to rebuke him. The men sawing the beech bough looked to where the old man was pointing. To Adam.

Can’t stay here.
His fist balled around Fenella’s note. He turned and hastened for the boat.

A
dam had slept little on the three-day sail alone to Sark, fighting headwinds that buffeted the little fishing boat and fighting his own private turmoil. It was with relief that he raised the island, a welcome landfall. He nudged the tiller to starboard and lowered the mainsail, letting the
Odette
ghost into La Coupée Bay. Razorbills swooped over his head toward the cliffs that rose in a semi-circle, and sheep grazed on the meadowed cliff top. Smoke curled from chimneys among the cottages that hugged its base. Adam saw some of his crew moving around the boatshed and other outbuildings. The morning was still, the breeze warm, carrying earthy smells of pine and sawdust and spring flowers. And a bitter whiff of burning charcoal. Always the bitter with the sweet, he thought. Three days had not been enough to quiet the questions raging in his mind.

Tyrone had come after him to kill him, but who had sent him? Frances? Or was he working for Alba? But surely if Alba had known where he could find Adam he would have sent more than one man. More likely, Tyrone had done it for pay, Frances’s pay. She had already tried to kill Adam by posting that gunman on the abbey roof. This time she’d sent Tyrone. Twice now she had caught Adam off-guard. He swore he would not let her do it a third time.

Torturing him, too, were questions about Fenella.
I have no further need of your services
. How could she write such words after all they’d been through together, after what they’d been to each other? And why had she suddenly decided to stay? Her brief message gave no hint that she felt herself in danger, though she’d been well aware that she should get to the safety of England. He could not understand her. It was as though she’d suddenly become a different person. And who was this
old friend?
A man, Adam’s blood told him. A man she wanted to be with.
More than she wants to be with me
. A cankerous thought gnawed:
Was I just a dalliance for her?
That was hard to take.

Let her go,
he ordered himself.
You have a mission to complete for Elizabeth
. He went to the foredeck and heaved the anchor overboard, which sent pain shooting through his tender shoulder. As he watched the anchor sink he told himself to drown his bitter disappointment about Fenella. Nothing could come of loving a woman who didn’t want him.

“Ahoy, my lord!”

He turned to see a boat rowing out from shore. He knew that brawny back hauling at the oars. His longtime mate, James Curry. “Ahoy!” he called.

The thought of seeing his ship again sent fresh energy coursing through him. The
Elizabeth
had been a wounded hulk when she’d limped in here over two weeks ago, but by now his crew working with Fenella’s shore crew would have completed the overhaul. New planking on her hull, a new mainmast, new sails. In fact, since he didn’t see her alongside the jetty, he assumed Curry must have sent her out for a sea trial of the repairs. It was exhilarating to think he’d soon be aboard his own ship carving the Channel northwestward, the wind in her teeth.

It was time to get home. Time to get back to the business of his queen. On the
Elizabeth
he’d done his share of harassing Spanish shipping alongside the Sea Beggars, damaging Spain’s chain of supply to Alba’s regime in the Netherlands. England and Spain were in an uneasy standoff, and the menace of Alba’s Spanish armies less than a hundred miles off Elizabeth’s coast was a constant threat to her. Spain could invade her overnight. Adam’s aggressive actions had been to keep England safe, but now he needed to turn his attention to peace. And to his friendship with Elizabeth, because that just might get Kate and Robert home. Elizabeth had powerful diplomatic tools at her disposal. Despite England’s tension with Spain, trade between the Netherlands and England was supremely important to both countries, and he might be able to exploit that current to carry his children back to him. Quiet diplomacy. Elizabeth might manage it. At Whitehall Palace he would put his case to her.

The rowboat bumped alongside the
Odette
and Adam caught the line his mate tossed up. “You’re well met, Curry,” he said, belaying the line around a cleat. He added in jest, “But where’s my ship, man? Have you sold her to the Barbary pirates?”

Curry was climbing aboard, and the moment he straightened up on deck his grim face told Adam that something was very wrong.

“I had no way to get word to you, my lord.”

“About what? What’s happened?”

“They came two days ago. It was pitch night. They sent a fire ship.” Curry plowed a blistered hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, my lord. We could not save her.”

The charred hull lay at anchor like a floating corpse. Burned to the waterline. Adam stood on the beach staring at it, his stomach heaving. Threads of oily black smoke curled from the stern of what was once his ship. The acrid smell of scorched timbers—that was the charcoal he’d smelled when he’d sailed in.

He struggled to speak through his shock. “You posted no guard?”

“I did,” Curry said beside him. “Two good men, Cole and Withrow. The Spanish devils slit their throats.”

Fury shuddered through Adam. He saw it. Cole and Withrow lying in their own blood. The fire ship crashing into the
Elizabeth
’s stern. Flames leaping up on deck, scurrying up the masts, bursting into a frenzy at the canvas, whipping the rigging. He saw spars snapping. Rigging tumbling. Masts ablaze. Everything crashing down to the deck into the maw of the roaring fire.

“By the time we got to the beach it was too late. We jumped into boats with pumps, but we couldn’t get near. She was an inferno. Then the fire reached the gunpowder and the blast blew off the sterncastle. Timbers flying like knives. One sheared the side off Heywood’s face. He was in my boat. We took him to the Seigneurie, but he’s not going to make it.”

Adam’s hands balled into fists at his sides in rage. Rage at the Spaniards who had done this. Rage at his powerlessness. “How many dead?”

“Just those three. Then the dagos scurried away like the rats they are. After the gunpowder blew we got aboard, a few of us, did what we could.” Curry’s voice was a bitter growl as he looked at his blistered hands. “Which was nothing.”

“Who were they? What ship?”

“We didn’t see. They hit us and then they were gone.”

Adam tried to speak again, but his throat felt parched, scorched.
My ship.
Fifteen years ago he had overseen every inch of her creation. Planned her with his shipwright, instructed the carpenters, caulkers, riggers, sailmakers. He’d brought the
Elizabeth
to life, a taut, fast, lovely ship, and when he’d stood on her deck she was a proud, living thing beneath him. She had taken him thousands of miles with Hawkins’s trading expedition, their small fleet voyaging to the New World. A hurricane had blown them off-course into Spanish territory, to Mexico, and there, in San Juan de Ulúa, the Spaniards had butchered them, a vicious, treacherous attack. Four ships lost, hundreds of men. Adam had seen cannonballs rip off his men’s arms, shatter their legs, splatter their brains. Yet the
Elizabeth,
a wounded veteran, had brought him safely home with his handful of survivors. Now the Spaniards had struck again, leaving more corpses.
And one is my ship
. Amputated of masts, she was a flattened rubble of charcoal and ash, of twisted metal and crippled cannon. She was dead.

He forced out a word. “Salvage?”

Curry shook his head. “The guns are warped. Useless.”

“Where’s the seigneur?” Sark was the fiefdom of Seigneur Helier de Carteret. He was the authority here. Why had his security been so lax?

“Away on Jersey, sir, at his manor of Saint-Ouen. Been there since you left.” Curry turned and growled at someone, “Not now.”

Adam realized his men had gathered around. He turned. They stood watching him, waiting. He’d left England with forty-two seamen and gunners. After his skirmish with the Spanish galleon
Esperanza
he’d reached Sark with twenty-nine. Now, they were twenty-six. He saw bandaged hands. Blistered faces. Eyes hard with anger. These men had signed on for spoils. Not for humiliation and defeat.

“You men tried to save her,” he said. “I won’t forget that.”

A few nodded, though sullenly. There was grumbling. One man ventured, “Beggin’ your pardon, my lord, but how—”

“Shut your hole, Peacham,” Curry said. “You’ll get your orders when His Lordship’s ready.”

Adam knew what Peacham wanted to ask:
How do we get home?
They would all want that answer from him. He looked again at the charred wreck. Grief at her loss welled up in him.
My dead ship
. Then a monster wave of rage.
She was murdered
. Like his two men, their throats cut. He lengthened his gaze beyond the dead
Elizabeth
to the only other ship in the bay. Fenella’s caravel lying at anchor. Swedish, by her rigging. Named
Gotland
.

“Master Curry, pass the word. I want that caravel ready to weigh anchor by nightfall. With all hands aboard.”

Curry’s eyes widened. “To sail for home, my lord?”

“No. We’re going to get some guns.”

By late afternoon the next day pewter-gray clouds had rolled in and the seas had kicked up, and Adam widened his stance for balance on the
Gotland
’s quarterdeck. His eyes were locked on the ships he was chasing.

Six vessels. They were a motley fleet. Two beamy, workaday coastal ships bucking in the chop. Three swift pinnaces. And in the lead an imposing carrack, her masts festooned with colorful, streaming banners. All were powered by billowing canvas so shabby it was as gray as the sky. They sailed in a ragged formation, but all were steadily following the carrack, the flagship of William de La Marck, who called himself Admiral of the Sea Beggars. This pack was only part of his fleet. His command reached over thirty vessels in the Channel.

Adam’s seasoned crew had quickly familiarized themselves with the Swedish caravel on their overnight sail from Sark, and when he now gave the order to overtake the vessels following La Marck his men swiftly manned the lines and braces, and soon the
Gotland
was skimming alongside the flagship. Curry hailed them. The caravel might be unfamiliar to La Marck, but he knew Adam, and within moments his crew hoisted flags to message the other ships to heave to. Adam gave the same order to his men. He and Curry lowered the skiff, and with Curry at the oars they rowed through the chop for the flagship. A spattering rain began to fly, cold on Adam’s face. The crew on the ship lowered a rope ladder over the side and Adam grappled it and climbed.

“Thornleigh!” La Marck boomed from the quarterdeck. “I thought by now Alba would have your head on a pike!”

Adam could not help smiling. He called up, “It’s good to see you, too, my friend!”

La Marck came down the steps and strutted across the deck to greet him. The fellow had been born strutting, Adam thought, glad to see the wily rogue looking hale. La Marck was neither tall nor powerfully built. A paunch swelled beneath his narrow chest, and his skinny legs reminded Adam of a grasshopper. His cheeks were chubby and his curly hair, feather thin, danced like a baby’s in the wind. He had once been a man of property in Flanders and he still dressed like a lord, though one who’d lost his tailor. Gun grease smeared the crimson silk scarf wound around his waist, and cinder marks pocked his yellow brocade breeches above the faded peacock-blue silk garters at his knees.

But Adam knew that the sword at the Dutchman’s hip was of the finest Toledo steel and knew the blade had often been slick with blood. Only a fool crossed swords with La Marck. He was a ferocious fighter and had attracted scores of his countrymen to follow him, men who’d been outlawed under Alba’s reign of terror, their homes and property and businesses confiscated. They had come to him with ships and guns and bloody-minded resolve, and had proudly dubbed themselves the Sea Beggars. Others had joined them. French Huguenots. Rogue corsairs from Portugal. The prince to whom they swore their allegiance, William of Orange, living in exile in the German lands, had been quick to see their usefulness to his cause of one day pushing Spain out of the Netherlands, so he’d issued them letters of marque, which as a sovereign prince he was entitled to do. Letters of marque, issued by any country, authorized the bearer who had suffered a hostile action by a foreigner in time of peace to recoup his losses by boarding and ransacking foreign vessels. With over thirty ships under his command La Marck had built a fleet that was the scourge of Spanish shipping.

“Bloody hell, Thornleigh,” the Dutchman said, embracing him with vigor, “we heard you sank the
Esperanza
. I thought Alba would hound you down and fry your balls with butter. I swear, you’ve got a cat’s nine lives.”

“You’ve got a few yourself,” Adam said. The Admiral’s crew had sauntered near to watch. They were a dirty, hard-looking lot, none of them shy at leaving their stations to come and gawp. The lax discipline did not impress Adam. He had some hard men in his own crew, but he and Curry kept order.

“Come, let’s have a drink,” La Marck said, slapping Adam’s back, “and tell me where you’ve been.”

They settled in the Admiral’s stern cabin. The walls were scuffed, the bulkhead splintered from action the ship had seen, but the berth was plump with a feather mattress and tangerine satin pillows. The ship rocked in the swell. Up on deck wind whistled in the rigging. Adam and La Marck sat across from each other, a sea chest between them, as a boy served them Madeira. Two of La Marck’s captains stood flanking him. Adam had seen both captains fight bravely, fair-haired, youthful-looking William Bloys and brooding, dark-bearded Lenaert Jansz. Curry stood beside Adam, enjoying the wine but alert. From up on deck came the sound of men laughing.

“Look at this.” La Marck threw open the chest and pulled out a crucifix as long as his arm. “Solid gold,” he said proudly.