The Queen's Exiles (34 page)

T
he fire-tipped arrow blazed like a comet against the blue morning sky. Loosed from the neighbor’s roof, it sailed over the wall that surrounded the house of the departed Valverde family. Plunging, it pierced the stable’s thatched roof. Flames from the arrowhead scurried along the thatch.

On the street outside the house, Adam watched the fire arrow’s arc, then watched it disappear behind the wall. Standing among the leafy bay trees with Curry and Morrison and Toth, he waited, jumpy with frustration, for all he could see was a patch of the courtyard through the open gate.
Open for me to walk into Alba’s trap
. The leaves above him rustled in the breeze like voices whispering a warning. He scanned the top of the wall where the arrow had disappeared. What was happening?
Curse it, has the thing hit the ground and died?

“There!” Curry said quietly, pointing.

Adam saw it now. A thread of black smoke. Morrison, tense as a bearbaiting dog, started to unsheathe his knife and lunged a step toward the open gate, but Adam caught him and held him back. “Not yet.”

The four of them watched the smoke thicken and billow, the column listing leeward in the wind. Adam could smell the smoke now, and he heard the first shout from the house behind the wall, the words unclear but the meaning unmistakable: an alarm. Not panicky; a disciplined military call to action.

“That’s cut into their breakfast,” Toth muttered with a dark grin. They heard a bang like a door kicked open, and soldiers’ voices rose, several now. Adam caught the clipped words of a call for water buckets. Toth, tense but eager, said to him, “Now?”

“Not yet.” Adam turned toward the street and shouted, “Fire!”

Curry turned and took up the call. “Fire!”

Down the street a bald head craned from an upstairs window. A few houses away a door opened and a woman stepped out, wiping her hands on her apron. “Fire!” Adam yelled. “Help!” Up and down the street window shutters were thrown open and people appeared at doorways. Two men came running, and three more jogged from the opposite direction, two of them with buckets. “Commander Valverde’s house?” one called as he ran.

“Yes!” Adam said. “Please, help us!”

The small throng of neighbors reached them, with more heading toward them every moment: men in homespun work clothes, a blacksmith in his thick leather apron, three young apprentices, a baker dusted with flour, a couple of sturdy housewives. Several immediately hurried through the open gate. Adam turned to his men. “Now.”

They ran in with the anxious neighbors. The courtyard rang with the voices of over a dozen soldiers trying to contain the fire that now blazed all along the stable roof. Some must have been sleeping in the stable, for they were dragging out their belongings, stamping at teeth of flames on sacks and satchels. A half-dozen more soldiers poured out of the house to join those at the well in an elbow of the wall, passing buckets down a line of men and up to two on a ladder against the stable wall who tossed the water onto the blazing roof. Adam and his men blended with the excited people from the street who kept streaming into the courtyard, twenty or more neighbors now. The soldiers’ disciplined actions gave way to disorder as the neighbors, milling pell-mell, pitched in to fight the flames. Adam counted over two dozen soldiers, a frightening number, because he knew there would be others in the house obeying their orders to guard his children. He’d been right: Alba had sent a troop. Adam caught the alarm in the eyes of Curry and Morrison and Toth, who were surely thinking the same thing. How many soldiers altogether? Thirty? More?
Don’t think about that. Just get into the house. Get Robert and Kate.

The front door of the house was open, two more soldiers hurrying out to join their fellows. Adam skirted the bucket line, scanning the neighbors until he spotted the blacksmith, a big fellow with a bristling sandy moustache. Their eyes met. Adam nodded to him. The blacksmith gave a terse nod back. Adam turned and beckoned Curry and Morrison and Toth, who followed him as he strode toward the open front door, passing laboring soldiers and neighbors. His heart beat furiously as he glanced behind him at the blacksmith who suddenly bellowed, “In the name of Prince William!”

Instantly the blacksmith and most of the male neighbors drew weapons—daggers, dirks, axes, knives. There were twenty at least and they fell on the unsuspecting soldiers with battle cries. Adam drew his sword and his three men drew theirs and they ran for the door, Adam inwardly blessing Fenella for inviting the visitor last night to the barge, the blacksmith DeWitt, leader of the Brussels Brethren. These “neighbors” were his fellows. One had loosed the fire arrow.

Adam reached the door with his three men as weapons clanged behind them and men shouted and the stable blazed. With a last glance over his shoulder he saw a star of fire, windborne, sailing from the burning stable toward the roof of the house.

He burst into the house. Soldiers came at him, seven of them, but having been taken by surprise they were ill organized and he and his men hacked and slashed in a ferocious attack. Curry and Toth felled three. Morrison battled another. Adam parried with an expert swordsman whose blade sliced his forearm, drawing blood. Adam rammed his sword into the attacker’s belly. The man crumpled and fell. So did Morrison’s opponent.

As Toth and Morrison fought on against the last two, Adam bolted for the stairs with Curry right behind him. He raced up the steps and down the hall toward the door of the bedchamber where Fenella had seen the children. He was almost there when the door flew open. He glimpsed Kate, her face white with alarm. She was still in nightdress and robe. She saw him and her face lit up with joy just as two guards lunged out at him, swords drawn. Adam slashed and parried with manic vigor now that he’d seen Kate. Curry was beside him and together they cut down the two guards.

“Father!” Kate cried.

Adam went to her, catching his breath. “Where’s your brother?”

“Here,” Robert said faintly.

Adam whipped around. Across the room Frances had hold of the boy. How pale and pinched Frances looked! Three years since he’d seen her this close, and she met his gaze like an enemy, her eyes flashing with hate. Or was it fear? Adam didn’t know and didn’t care. She was gripping Robert’s shoulders, his back to her, holding him against her. Adam’s eyes didn’t leave her as he said to Curry, “Take my daughter. Kate, go with this man.”

She ran to Curry. Adam stalked across the room to Frances. “Let the boy go.”

Frances looked wildly toward the door for help. But there was only Curry standing with Kate beside the bodies of the fallen guards, one dead in a pool of blood, the other moaning as he died. Shouts and the clang of weapons in the courtyard rang downstairs. Robert stared up at his father’s blood-smeared sword. His head jerked, again and again. The tic.

“Robert,” Adam said gently, holding out his hand. “Come with me.”

Trust shone in the boy’s eyes. He broke from his mother’s grasp and took a step toward Adam and Adam caught his arm. But Frances snatched the boy’s collar, making him lurch to a stop. Robert, quaking, stood between his parents, who each had hold of him with one hand.

Adam raised his sword above Frances’s fingers curled on the collar at their son’s neck. The blade hovered over her wrist.

“Release him, madam, or lose your hand.”

She held his gaze. “You would not,” she challenged. “And now they’ll put you in chains! Alba will have your head!”

He hesitated, though hating himself for yielding. He was about to wrench the boy to him to break Frances’s grip, when a drop of blood slid from the blade and hit her wrist. She flinched in revulsion. It was enough, and Adam jerked the boy to him. Robert threw his arms around his father’s waist and clung to him. Adam quickly led him to Curry and Kate at the door. “Come!” Down the stairs they ran, Adam first, sword ready, the children hurrying after him, Curry at the rear.

“Stop them!” Frances screamed down from the top of the stairs. “Captain Ramos,
stop them!
”

Soldiers from the courtyard were running in, led by a lean, pock-faced officer.
Ramos,
Adam thought.
The captain Fenella described. The child killer
. Eight or ten soldiers were with him, but Morrison and Toth were ready for them, and on the soldiers’ heels some Brethren were attacking from the rear. Ramos’s men turned to fight the Brethren. DeWitt bolted in, holding a jagged timber as long and thick as his arm, the end of it ablaze. After Adam and the children reached the bottom of the stairs and ran on, DeWitt hurled the burning stick onto the steps. Flames licked the newel posts.

“To the cellar!” DeWitt shouted to Adam, beckoning.

Adam led his charges past soldiers and Brethren battling all along the hall. The soldiers were strong now that they had rallied, but the Brethren were fierce in their zeal. Adam glimpsed Toth battling Ramos. Toth ducked and Ramos’s sword slashed air. Toth lunged at him with his long knife, but Ramos parried savagely with his sword, disarming Toth, his knife clattering to the floor. Ramos’s sword slashed Toth’s throat. Blood spurted. Toth fell.

Rage exploded in Adam and he lunged with his sword for Ramos as Ramos turned to face one of the Brethren. But Curry grabbed his elbow, spinning him around. “Too late, my lord, Toth’s dead. Come!”

“To the cellar!” DeWitt shouted again across the hall.

It brought Adam to his senses. He grabbed the terrified children and headed for DeWitt. Ramos turned and saw them and yelled, “After them!”

Adam and the children and Curry followed DeWitt through to the kitchen. DeWitt held open a door. “Down to the cellar!” he shouted. “Quick!”

A soldier charged Curry from behind and Curry whipped around to fight him. Adam gritted his teeth at leaving Curry, but he barreled on through the door, making sure Kate and Robert were behind him. It led on to a staircase and as he ran down the steps, the children scurrying after him, he heard Ramos shout again, “After them!”

The cellar’s gloom enveloped the three fugitives. Dim light, dank air. Adam stopped at the bottom of the stairs just long enough to usher Kate and Robert into the shadows where barrels and casks and crates were ranged like irregular tombstones in the murky light. Above, the scuffling sound of men fighting told him the Brethren and Curry and Morrison were keeping the soldiers at bay.
Keep them back for just a few more minutes!

“Father,” Kate cried, breathless with fear, “there’s no way out!”

“Come!” He plunged ahead, pushing over crates and casks that smashed and rolled as he cleared a path all the way to the far wall. A high stack of crates rose beside a shadowy door. Adam rapped on the door and said the password: “Brielle.” The door opened and Kate and Robert gasped as two men with pistols stepped out. Then Fenella.

Adam had never loved her more—nor been more afraid for her safety. She was risking her life for his children. But now she and Kate and Robert could flee. That was the plan Fenella and Adam had agreed on. He gripped her hand and felt how cold hers was, yet her face shone at him even in the gloom. How brave she was, and how clever! The Brethren knew their enemy. All residences where Alba’s commanders were billeted had escape passages in case of insurrection. Fenella had explained it to Adam last night. The tunnel that she and these two Brethren had come down led to a church. That’s where she would take Robert and Kate, then to the canal and away. “Thank you,” he said quickly to her and her friends.

A thunder of boots sounded above in the kitchen. Ramos and his soldiers were coming. Adam pulled the children toward Fenella. “Go with this lady,” he told them. “Down the tunnel.”

Robert froze in fear. “What?” he cried. Kate looked just as apprehensive. Fenella was a stranger to them, and the tunnel was a frightening black maw. Robert’s tic claimed him, his head jerking frantically.

“Go!” Adam told them. “There’s no time to waste!”

Ramos burst onto the top step, a monstrous ghostly form in the gloom. Robert lurched backward in mindless terror. He ducked behind the stacked crates. Adam tried to snatch him—they were steps away from freedom!—but the boy was frantic to hide and skulked back farther. He squatted down, huddling, his arms wrapped around his knees, eyes closed, head jerking.

Panic swarmed over Adam.
No more time!

“We have to close the other door,” one of the Brethren grimly told Fenella. “Now. This is our only chance.”

She cast Adam an agonized look. “Adam?”

He almost choked. But the man was right. Unless they dealt with Ramos and his soldiers no one was getting out. “Do it,” he told Fenella. He grabbed Kate and pushed her to her knees beside Robert. “Stay down!” he whispered fiercely to the children. “Don’t make a sound.”

“Close it!” Fenella commanded down the tunnel, her voice a croak of dread. The boy’s terror had exploded the plan! “Bolt it!” she said. The door midway along the tunnel banged shut.
No way out now,
she thought.

She dashed back and ducked behind the stacked crates where Adam and the children and the two Brethren were hiding. She hunkered down with them, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

Ramos and his pack thundered down the stairs. Fenella’s muscles trembled as she peered through a crack between crates. Ramos didn’t even pause as he charged into the gloom, his bloodied sword raised, and set out across the path of overturned crates and barrels toward the open door to the tunnel. “Don’t let them escape!” he yelled to his men.

They raced past the stack of crates so fast they sent a draft of dank air that hit Fenella like a net. Sixteen men . . . seventeen. They poured headlong into the tunnel . . . twenty-three in all. Then, no more. Fenella held herself back, felt Adam and the Brethren holding themselves back, too, until she heard a shout of surprise down the tunnel. The first soldiers had reached the door midway. The Brethren on the other side had already closed it and bolted it.

Adam sprang to his feet. So did the two Brethren. Adam slammed the cellar door shut, then dropped the iron bar to bolt it. Ramos and his soldiers were now trapped between the two doors. Fenella felt a dizzying flood of relief. This part of the plan had worked. Adam had lured the soldiers to the cellar and straight into the tunnel.