The Queen's Gamble (5 page)

“Filthy papist whore.”

She struggled to get up. A boot stomped her chest, pinning her to the ground. Terror flooded her. A primal fear that set her mind screaming for help from Carlos.
“Socorro!”
she cried. Help!

“What’s she jabbering?”

“Spanish,” the bearded man growled. “A papist trollop, and Spanish to boot.”

“If the papists take over we’ll
all
be talking Spanish. Or God-cursed French.”

“Aye, they’ll force it down our throats like the stinking bread they call Christ’s body.”

The bearded one crouched down and thrust his face next to hers and grabbed the thin chain of her crucifix, his jagged fingernails scraping her skin. “Filth,” he growled, and jerked the chain, snapping it off her neck.

Another face loomed close to hers. Broken teeth and red whiskers and a stink of ale. Even in her terror Isabel knew he was not like the others; he was calm. It made him all the more frightening. “Bring her over,” he said, jerking his chin toward the church wall. They grabbed her arms and dragged her despite her furious squirming. They took her to an alcove. She felt its darkness. Her fear dug deep. No one could see her here.

They dropped her, but the red-whiskered man instantly grabbed her hand, his eyes on her ruby ring. She wrenched her arm free. “Let me go!” He snatched her hand back and yanked the ring, but could not get it past her knuckle. He whipped out a knife, then looked up at an accomplice. “Keep her still.”

Thick legs in boots straddled her. She made a desperate lunge to get up, but the accomplice thudded down on her, sitting on her chest, knees up, his crotch in her face. She could scarcely breathe. This brute clamped a hand around her wrist and forced her hand into the air so that the man with the knife had clear access. Isabel felt sick with terror. He was going to carve off her finger! She kicked wildly and thrashed to get out from under the brute.

“Won’t be still, eh?” He bunched his other fist and raised it to punch her face.

Hands from above grappled the brute’s shoulders and hauled him off her. Isabel sucked in a breath as his weight lifted. She suddenly saw daylight. Then a face that made her gasp. Adam!

Her brother was fighting the brute. The black-bearded man lunged for Adam, too. Isabel groped for the brute’s foot to bring him down, but she could not reach him. Adam took a punch on the chin from one man, a punch in the belly from the other.

Suddenly, two men were at Adam’s side, hauling off his attackers. Free now, Adam whirled around to the red-whiskered man with the knife. But the man crouched at Isabel’s side and held the knife at her throat. If she moved, the blade would slice her. “Back off!” he told Adam.

Isabel groped for a handful of stony snow and flung it in his eyes. He shuddered, blinking, and Adam kicked the knife from his hand. He sprawled backward. Scrambling to his feet, he took off, plowing into the crowd.

Adam turned to the two men who had come with him. They were finishing with Isabel’s tormentors. One of them punched the brute in the face, and the brute staggered back a step, his nose spurting blood, then turned on his heel and slunk away. The other was chasing off the black-bearded man. Adam called to the first man, “Look out, Rogers! Knife!”

His friend whirled around and raised his forearm to deflect the attack of an assailant with a dagger. Then he punched the man in the belly so hard, the fellow crumpled. Bending over, gripping his stomach, he pushed off into the crowd.

Adam was helping Isabel up. She was still catching her breath. Her clothes were askew and her hands were dirty and she could not stop trembling. The moment she was on her feet she threw her arms around her brother’s neck. He gave her a quick, tight hug.

“You picked a fine time to go sightseeing.”

“Oh, Adam!” She pulled away and saw his wry smile. “But how did you know I—” She saw blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. She pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve to tend his cut, but he took the handkerchief from her and pressed it to her throat, and when he lowered it she saw the smear of her own blood. In her fear, she hadn’t felt the man’s blade nick her. She felt suddenly shaky, light-headed. She groped Adam’s arm for support. She started to ask again, “How—”

Horsemen thundered into the churchyard, a half dozen of the sheriff’s men. Adam tugged Isabel out of the way as the horses passed, their hooves throwing up clods of muck. Fistfights had broken out in the furious melee around the pulpit, and amid the blows and shouts the sheriff’s men shouldered their mounts into the skirmishing.

Adam said to Isabel, “We need to get you out of here. Can you walk?”

“I think so. Yes.”

He turned to the two men with him. One was picking up his cap from the ground while the other scanned the crowd, keeping watch for new assailants. They were dressed in rough homespun clothes, like soldiers or sailors, and were armed with long daggers at their belts. Adam, under his fine blue cloak, wore a sword. None of them had unsheathed their weapons. “Go on ahead,” Adam told them. “I’ll meet you at the jetty.”

“Aye, sir,” they said almost in unison, touching their foreheads in a rudimentary salute. They turned to go, and Isabel said to them, “Thank you. Both of you.” They glanced back at her, and the one named Rogers gave her a mute nod. They strode away.

Isabel looked at the spot where she had been attacked. “My crucifix,” she said. They had torn it from her and left it on the ground. She went back and crouched down to rescue it from the muck. She wiped the cross as clean as she could with her dirty fingers.

“I’d leave it if I were you,” Adam warned. His eyes flicked to a man watching them darkly from the edge of the crowd.

She jammed the crucifix into her cloak pocket next to her mother’s book, then came back to Adam’s side, wanting to get far away from these mad people. He took her elbow, his gaze still on the watching man. “Come.”

Once they were out of the churchyard it was a relief to reach Watling Street with its ordinary, calm foot traffic and oxcarts. Isabel still felt shaky, and Adam saw it. Under the sign of the Black Dog he pushed open the door. They went into the alehouse, and Isabel welcomed its fusty warmth. A handful of men who were drinking glanced up with scant interest. Adam spoke to the landlady, and soon Isabel was sitting on a bench by the fire with a cup of warm cider to refresh her and a basin of water to clean her muddy hands.

“That’s better,” Adam said. “I can’t send you home looking like something the cat dragged in.”

Home. Carlos. She remembered how she had cried out in Spanish. She shuddered, imagining what might have happened if Adam had not rescued her. Drying her hands with a rough linen towel, she said quietly, “Thank God you were there.”

“God may have had little to do with it,” he said with a smile. “I came to find you. Father’s steward said you’d gone to Chastelain’s, and at Chastelain’s they said you’d gone to St. Paul’s.”

She looked at him in wonder. It had been five years. She didn’t know where to start. “I hear I must call you
Sir
Adam,” she said. “Sounds odd. Like some old man.”

“And a little chap now calls
you
‘Mother.’ ” He shook his head in mock amazement. “I remember you in your cradle with your thumb in your mouth.”

She had to laugh. “You’ll soon be a father yourself. Hard to imagine. You, a settled homebody.”

His smile faded. “Bel, that’s why I wanted to see you.” He seemed about to say more, but a man who had lumbered over to the bench sat down beside them and settled in to nurse his pot of ale. “I need to talk to you,” Adam said to her under his breath. “But not here. Do you feel well enough to walk?”

Her body felt bruised all over, and her spirits were still shaken, but she did long to talk to him. The cider had steadied her a little, and her mind began to hum with questions. “Yes,” she said. “I must get home.”

“And I have to get to the Old Swan Stairs to meet my men. It’s on the way. Shall we?”

They set out along Watling Street to where it curved into Budge Row, making their way toward the river. Isabel was glad of the support of Adam’s arm, and as they walked she stole looks at him. He was dark-haired like her, but whereas she had inherited their father’s blue eyes, his were as brown as chestnuts, the legacy of their father’s first wife. It felt so comforting to have him by her side. Adam, her stepbrother, nine years older, the hero of her childhood. Adam, who knew everything. How to wade the stream by their Colchester house to show her eggs in the plovers’ nests on the island. How to pilfer treacle buns from the cook’s pantry when everyone else was abed. How to race around the Colchester church graveyard, jumping to touch the belfry rope on the way. Sometimes he let her be the victor if he hopped up onto the parapet wall and walked it like a tightrope so she could reach the churchyard lichgate first. Now she tried to see in his face any clue of how he had lived in the years since she had last seen him. Almost as tall as their father, he was as sturdy as ever, but the slightest bit thinner, and only a sister would have noticed the new tautness in his face.

“I hear Carlos has become quite the Spanish grandee.”

Isabel was surprised by the cool edge in his voice, as though he held some grudge against Carlos. She couldn’t imagine why. “Not exactly,” she said, then added, glad to show her pride in her husband, “but he has done well.”

“Spain,” he said darkly. “England’s ally, so they claim. We’ll see.”

She had no wish to talk politics. “Can you come back to the house? Nicolas would be thrilled to meet you. I have spun tales about Uncle Adam ever since he could crawl.”

He said he could not, that he had to return to the naval yard at Portsmouth. He was in the capital for just the day, having had a meeting this morning with Sir Benjamin Gonson, treasurer of the Admiralty.

“Hobnobbing with great men. My, Sir Adam, how you’ve risen in the world.” But her teasing was only to mask how pleased she was at his advancement. Adam had worked on their father’s ships from the time he was twelve, moving up from deckhand to pilot to captain and master. No one knew the sea better. “Father said you’ve been at work rebuilding the Queen’s navy?”

“Trying to. Took months just evaluating assets and liabilities. An inventory of each ship’s tonnage, state of readiness, quality of artillery. Then calculating what it would take, at what cost, to make the fleet into a true fighting force.” He shook his head. “Hell of a task. The fleet’s just thirty-four vessels, and several of those are mere barks and pinnaces, one brigantine. Of the twenty-one great ships, only eleven are in satisfactory condition, the other twelve so dilapidated they aren’t worth repairing. I’ve assured Her Majesty, though, that she can rely on private vessels as well. If necessary, three dozen merchant ships can be refitted and fashioned for defense.”

“Good heavens, you’re friends with the Queen, too? Like Mother and Father?”

He shot her a look. “You were away a long time, Bel.” He frowned, as though not sure whether to go on. “A lot happened,” he said. Then, nothing more.

He’s just like them,
she thought with a jolt of anger. Why would no one tell her what
did
happen? The rush of emotion made her shaky again, and she stumbled.

“Here,” he said, guiding her to a low stone wall that skirted a churchyard. “Sit down.”

She did. And took a few deep breaths. The church’s tombstones brought back a shiver of her ordeal at St. Paul’s. It tumbled together in her mind with her resentment about being shut out of the family’s secrets. “I met Frances,” she said. It came out like a challenge. She hoped Adam would take it up. Explain.

But he was silent. They were near Thames Street with its smells of fish and seaweedy debris. Shouts of “Oars!” and “Westward, ho!” came from people beckoning wherries. A couple of children ran by chasing a goose. Behind the churchyard wall pigeons fluttered down onto the snow between the tombstones and pecked at the brown grass beneath.

Adam sat down beside her. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Of course,” she said. “What is it?”

“I have to go away for . . . well, for quite a while. My wife is near her time. She has no mother, no sisters to help. Would you look after her? Stay with her a while to be sure all’s well with the babe?”

A while? Isabel thought with a touch of dismay. “How long?”

“A few months. She’s not young. It may be a hard birth. Hard for both.”

Not young. And not one of us. “Adam,” she said, “how did you come to marry a Grenville?”

He looked down the street. “A long story.” He stood up.

“But one I want to hear.” She stood as well.

He looked at her. “Are you all right now? Can you go on?”

“Adam, I have a right to know. Carlos and I need to start back home soon, but you’re asking me to postpone that to stay with Frances. I want to know about her. Did you marry her to end the feud? Or was it
despite
the feud? Do you love her so very much?”

He let out a bitter laugh. “Ask her.”

“Stop this. You’re as bad as Mother and Father. They go back and forth to the palace in some secret business but never say a word about what it is. They put on happy faces as though they’re just going there to play cards, but I know something is seriously amiss.”

They stood face-to-face on the busy street. His look darkened. “They’re hoping it will all go away. It won’t.”

“Adam, what is happening? Why won’t any of you talk to me?”

“Because what’s happening doesn’t concern you.”

“Not
concern
me? I’m part of this family!”

“Well, you’re not part of what’s going on in England. Not anymore. You’re Spanish.”

“I have as much English blood as—”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what?”

“You’re Catholic.”

The word fell between them like a tree trunk.

So that’s it,
she thought with a shiver. Her own family didn’t trust her. They thought of her the way those men who had attacked her did, as a “papist.” Except her family put on smiling faces. False faces.

She took a deep breath to steady herself, and looked away.