Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (23 page)

His heart beat faster to see the light. She could not sleep as he could not. He smiled. She wanted him to storm her room, lay siege to her heart and halt her vexing behavior like a young spark come courting.

Along the yew hedge, a gardener had left a long orchard ladder. He rejected the idea at first, but on second thought, and uncaring what anyone looking on might think, he carried the ladder to the wall under Merry's window and climbed up. It was off the latch and he pulled it open and swung his legs over the sill and into the room.

A startled and fully clothed maid rose from the bed.

"Who are you?" he said, his eyes searching the far corners for Merry.

"Agnes, my lord, her ladyship's maid."

"You are the maid from the court," he said, and advanced on the bed, his voice almost guttural. "Where is she? Tell me if you value your life!"

The chandler hauled in the sails of the shallop and hailed the Dutch flagship
De Zeven Provincien.
"Passenger for ye."

Meriel stood on the half deck of the little fishing boat, trying to keep her footing as sailors peered over the side of the huge warship. There were so many gun ports, she could not count them all. Her legs felt like water, ebbing away under her, and the ale she'd drunk had long ago lost its ability to warm her. She took hold of the mast and remembered why she was here. Giles had not been all the motive with which she had begun this adventure in the Tower.... She had needed to save herself. ... But he was now the whole reason why she must finish this job without discovery.

An officer, judging by his gold braid and lace, leaned over the top rail and lifted his broad-brimmed hat in salute to her. A ladder was lowered. The chandler held the bottom of it as the shallop bumped against the Dutch ship.

"Here's luck to yer, m'lady," he said, touching his forehead. "Whatever ye be doing, God's blessings on ye."

Meriel nodded, not trusting her voice. Taking a deep breath and sending a quick prayer aloft, she began to climb the ladder, moving up and down in the Channel swells. She almost smiled, for it was what Sir Edward would call a lubber's ladder, as easy to climb as a hall staircase. The rail swung open and she stepped across onto a deck almost white from holystoning.

Sailors watched her with obvious suspicion as they pretended to go about their duties. She remembered that females aboard ships were supposed to bring bad luck. She allowed herself one second to wonder whether she would bring it or suffer it.

The young officer bowed, and she shook out her skirts and rearranged her cloak, checking to see that the ciphers were still securely tied about her waist. She glanced at the stern and saw the Dutch flag, a red lion on a gold field. She was truly in enemy territory.

"Goedemorgen,
Countess," the young officer said, smiling widely.
"Mijnheer
de Witt waits eager for you in his cabin."

She nodded, since no other acknowledgment was required, and the officer, smiling betimes, led her to the com-panionway aft, carefully helping her down the stairs. He knocked on a well-crafted oaken door with a brass handle, opened the door and announced, "The Countess of Warbor-ough."

Meriel stepped across the high lintel, and for a moment she was back in the cabin on Giles's ketch, the sun slanting through beveled pane windows, casting diamond shadows on the deck at her feet.

De Witt came forward immediately and kissed her hand.
"Met plezier,
Lady Felice. I have never seen you in such health and beauty."

He was a man of about forty years, bewigged and with a thin mustache and goatee very much after the Spanish fashion.

"A flattering greeting," Meriel said in her haughty Felice tone. "And now to complete my business with you."

"Ja,
and why not, when you bring me dispatches from our agents in London? Good news is my hope."

He bowed again, smiling to an extent that Meriel thought excessive, but that might be the Dutch way. "Yes, I have here dispatches from three of your agents in London. I doubt you will be pleased, Admiral."

"I am not an admiral," he said, "but, as you should know, a representative of the States-General."

Meriel had made her first mistake. Why hadn't Chiffinch or Agnes warned her? "A courtesy title, sir, since you head a great fleet."

De Witt bowed, smiling still, and Meriel continued. "I fear you will not be pleased to hear that King Charles and his Admiralty are rapidly strengthening all the Thames defenses."

"Nee!
I am sorry to hear it. We had earlier news that the king thought our fleet just a feint while peace talks were concluding, and did not intend to meet us with force. This is most disturbing. May I see these unhappy dispatches?"

Meriel, not showing the relief she felt that her explanation had been accepted, indicated that the dispatches were beneath her skirts, and he bowed again, turning his back gallantly to face the row of windows aft. She lifted her skirts and untied the pocket, placing the dispatches on de Witt's map table, which she could see contained a detailed map of the Thames estuary. She took as long as she could, trying to memorize the red arrows on the map that must indicate attack plans. Meriel couldn't help but notice the plate of rich Dutch butter and new-baked bread. She thought she would be able to sniff out warm bread even at her last moments, then quickly retreated from that thought.

"I cannot tell you, dear Countess, how much I have longed for your arrival," de Witt said, turning.

There was a strange shiver in his voice, almost as if he were laughing uproariously under that curled wig and intelligent face.

He opened the packet and removed the dispatches, looking up at her occasionally and nodding. "Good work, my lady. I have never seen better."

Meriel nodded as if praise was her expectation. "Of course. Now, if you will show me to my quarters, I will await transfer to the first ship leaving for Holland.... With all promised treasure ... unless you have dispatches to send back to London." She couldn't mention what that treasure would be, since it had not been discovered as she left the Tower. She added, "According to our bargain."

De Witt bowed, most courteously. "It is indeed my bargain with the great Countess of Warborough, and I do not forget."

The cabin door behind Meriel opened and she turned abruptly, the skin on the back of her neck giving her a sharp warning too late to heed.

Felice, Countess of Warborough, stood in the threshold, light from the companionway making a halo around her head, but it was a devil's voice that issued from her mouth. "This serving wench is the poor counterfeit I told you Chiffmch bragged about before I escaped from the Bowyer Tower. Throw her overboard!"

De Witt shook his head, looking on Meriel with pity. "Ah, my dear Countess Felice, we Hollanders are a gentle nation of traders and tulip growers. First, we must take her to our country and duly try this imposter for an enemy spy. Although it would be a shame to put a rope around that pretty neck, and if you will pardon me for saying it, Countess: Whoever she is, she has the loveliest neck on this ship."

Lord Giles waited in the shadows outside the garden wall where the carriageway turned past Harringdon Hall and connected to the Great Yarmouth road. As Dr. Wyndham's carriage stopped, one long-fingered hand loosened its firm grip on Agnes's throat. "Call him to you," Giles said in a low, rasping voice.

Giles meant her to fear him more than she feared failing whomever she served. Her answer confirmed his success.

"Doctor," she choked. "Over here, quickly."

The doctor's desperate whisper answered, "Agnes, we must away before we are discovered!"

Giles stepped into the lantern light. "Your confederate is my prisoner, physician. And if you attempt to leave before you fully answer my demands, I'll have the sheriff on you both for kidnapping my countess ... providing you escape my mercies."

Reluctantly, Dr. Wyndham lowered himself from the carriage and gave a little jump to the ground. He bowed. "I am truly at your service, my lord, for I am ready to quit this ugly business, even to losing my post at court."

"Keep your court position, sir, but tell me what I demand. Now follow me, and no trickery. I have guards about the grounds and you could not leave ... not alive. Those are my orders, so doubt me at your peril."

If nothing else had, the methodical, uninflected cadence of Lord Giles's anguished words convinced the little doctor to obey.

Giles turned his back in scorn on the slow-moving pair and walked into the great hall. A sleepy spit boy on his way to light the roasting fires stopped and stared in droopy-eyed alarm until Giles waved him away toward the summer kitchens.

Agnes settled into a chair by the fireplace, from all appearances in a near faint.

Giles roared at Dr. Wyndham. "Now speak, Doctor. Where did you take my wife?"

"To a chandler's shop in Great Yarmouth on the quayside, as I was instructed."

Agnes cried out. "Doctor, beware of saying more!"

"No, mistress, this mission is unworthy of a great country and a great king." Dr. Wyndham straightened his shoulders and his jaw, his face full of resolve.

Giles kept all puzzlement from his face. He would learn more from them if they thought he knew more than he did. He stepped toward the doctor, his large shadow high on the wall, overwhelming the smaller one. "Tell me what I ask, but answer me true on your life. You took her to await a ship back to Whitehall and the king."

Agnes interrupted: "A carriage, Doctor ... a carriage."

The doctor shook his head vigorously. "Your lordship, on my honor, I know naught of any plan for either ship or carriage. I am a simple physician, graduate of the University of Padua and of Bologna, renowned for healing in the capitals of Europe—"

Giles took a menacing step nearer, blinded by his anger and the clouds of deception that rose from these two, obscuring his deep need to understand.. . whether or no Merry had gone willingly. "Then, as with most doctors of physic, sir, you are a master at confirming what your patients don't know."

Dr. Wyndham drew himself up to a height he rarely obtained. "My lord, you may do as you will with me for this sorry business, but I will not agree to listen quietly to the scorn of my noble profession."

If Giles had any humor left, he would have smiled with admiration at such valor from so unlikely a source. Instead, he rounded on Agnes. "Is this the tale of it? The chandler made passage for her ladyship to London one way or the other. Why not by the doctor's coach? I cannot believe the king would send her into the Channel with the Hollanders lurking offshore."

Agnes was speechless, her mouth gaping, her face ashen in an obvious near faint, or at least a worthy imitation, which Giles thought as likely. A woman who spied had little to protect her when caught out but the appeal of her feminine weakness.

Giles paced the full length of the hall, his shadow looming over all. He could make no sense of this. He had known the king from the day of his coronation and had been a gentleman of his bedchamber on daily intimate terms with his monarch. Yes, Charles Stuart was a man led by his cod, and with an exceeding need for women beyond even a growing lad's, but he would never take a woman against her will. There was less need for this king to corrupt a countess for his bed than there was need for more water in the ocean. Did that mean that Merry had gone willingly? That all they had shared these last days had been playact? That all he had felt true in his deepest soul had been false? That he could never again trust his own heart? He tried to make himself believe it, for it was the only seeming answer. But each time Merry's face rose in his mind, her lips begging for his kiss, he could not.

He stopped abruptly before his two captives. "There has to be more to this that I am not told. Tell me now, or I will surely hold you both for the next assizes on the charge of kidnap. It will not go easy for you, I promise that on my honor." He disliked threatening a servant maid and the doctor, whom he admired against his own desire to despise him. But he had no choice.

The doctor looked at Agnes and shook his head sadly. "I can no longer do such work, e'en for His Majesty, and most certainly not for William Chiffinch. Since I know little, you must tell his lordship everything. At once!"

Agnes's hand trembled against her breast and, eyes avoiding Giles's face, she said, "My lord, she is under orders from the king's spymaster, as am I. She has gone of her own will to deliver ciphers to the Dutch to warn them off an attack with false tales of huge new defenses of the city and many fire ships in the Pool of London. The doctor played no part except as forced messenger."

Giles straightened, shock writ on his face and in the stonelike stiffness of his body. "A spy? Against the Dutch? The king and his spymaster have sent my wife into the enemy's hands, knowing the enmity they hold for me from the Battle of the Four Days!" His voice was rising beyond his efforts to control, while his heart sang a song he had never thought to hear:
She is no whore, but an English subject working for her country. All this time, she appeared to play me false, but was true and brave as no woman ever before.
...
My valiant lady playing a dangerous game.

"My lord," the doctor began, "your wife is not—"

A swift kick from Agnes had him bent double, clutching his shin. "Say more, Doctor, and lose your head!"

Giles roared. "I command you to say it!"

Dr. Wyndham mumbled, "I beg your pardon most humbly, your lordship, but what is left to be told must come from ... your wife." He gulped air into his lungs and concluded, "You must realize that all is now too late."

Agnes looked up as the gray light of dawn began to fill the high windows in the hall. "Aye, my lord. Felice is taken to the Dutch warship
De Zeven Provencien
at first light. I will pray for her. It is all that I can do."

Giles's voice returned from some dark depth. "How was she to escape?"

"Our information is"—Agnes took a shallow breath— "that she would be taken to Holland by a packet sent for that purpose with ample treasure for her services ... if they believed her ciphers."