The Heretic’s Wife (14 page)

It was an intelligent face—at least the part she could see—with a determined jaw and a noble brow. He was a translator, he’d said, a Lutheran sympathizer, going to the Continent to meet Tyndale. And though he hadn’t said so, not directly, she guessed he was a fugitive. She doubted that the prelates would let the students out free and clear. This one had no doubt escaped from the hospital. Prematurely, if his lack of strength was any indication.

He stirred and stretched. “Sorry to be such a bad traveling companion,” he said. “It’s just that, well . . . no use going there. I’m glad to be out of that stinking cellar.”

“It must have been awful,” she said, keeping her hand over her smooth chin.

He waved her off with a smile. “Small price, aye? We’re men of the Word, you and I, Gough. Brethren,” he said, draping his arm over her shoulder and shaking her lightly.

She felt a jolt go all through her body, a jolt that had nothing to do with
the rough bumping of the wagon. Her face flushed with embarrassment. How unlike her own brother he really was, though she would have delighted in being his friend, and perhaps more. His easy charm and his courage tugged at her heart. She wished she could have known him better. John would have liked him too; she knew it. At least the John she used to know.

“You all right, Gough?” Frith asked. “You look like somebody just stepped on your grave.” His voice was light, friendly, but Kate saw concern in his dark eyes and felt a stinging in her own, remembering how Frith had congratulated her—congratulated her brother—on his courage.

“Just a bit of road grit in my eye,” she growled, and suddenly hoped with all her soul that they would make it in time for this John to meet his ship and make good his escape.

By the time they reached Little Sodbury, the long shadows had disappeared behind threatening storm clouds. Though Kate’s companion no longer slept, he had turned pensive and seemed disinclined to talk. A mask of endurance replaced the cheerful demeanor she’d seen at breakfast. His dark eyes were clouded with pain.

But by now Kate had her own discomfort to think about. It had begun about an hour past with an ache in her lower belly, and with each bounce and jolt of the wagon, it had spread farther into her back. It must have been brought on by the jarring ride or maybe the anxiety attached with what now seemed like a very silly scheme. But whatever had precipitated the untimely arrival of her woman’s curse, she was ill prepared to cope with it. She was yet again grateful for John’s dark and heavy cloak. Once they got to Sodbury Manor—
please, God let us get to Sodbury Manor soon
—she could figure out what to do. After all, what could they do but scold if they found out she was an impostor? They would surely share the inventory with her for John’s sake, if naught else.

Lightning illumined the underbelly of the threatening clouds. The wagon lurched and a little groan escaped her lips. She glanced at Frith. His head was thrown back against the side of the wagon and his eyes were closed. If caught, he would face much more than embarrassment and a little scolding. He appeared not to have noticed either the lightning or her whimper.

“We’re here,” Swinford shouted. “And none too soon. You two get down and I’ll take the horses round to the stable.”

A growl of thunder answered, accompanied by a gusting wind. Kate
stood up, tried to jump down on rubber legs, felt the warm rush between her legs and instinctively tensed her thighs together to try to hold back the flow. John Frith followed her and seemed almost as unsteady. Surely the gates of paradise would be no more welcome than the entrance of the beautiful manor house with its lit lamps glowing in the window.

Lord and Lady Walsh were standing at the door. “Come in and welcome. We’ve not much time to waste,” he said. “But you’ve time to take a bit of refreshment before we meet the shipment,” she said.

Candles in sconces, hanging from the high-beamed rafters and along the wall, fought back the gloom of the approaching storm. An occasional flash of lightning lit a pair of stained-glass windows set high and on either side of a great chimney, though any sound of rumbling thunder was muted by the thick plaster walls. The candles flickered as Swinford came in, brushing a few drops of rain from his shoulders.

In the center of the hall, a table had been laid with sliced roast meats and fresh-baked bread. A basket of apples and rosy pears glowed beneath lit candles in a silver candelabra. Kate realized that she was ravenously hungry, but the aching in her lower back and belly reminded her that she had more urgent matters to attend to before she fed that hunger.

“My lady, may I speak with you?”

Lady Walsh looked at her expectantly.

“In private, please,” Kate stammered, feeling her skin suddenly growing warm and flushed and not unaware of the puzzled expression on Swinford’s face. John Frith seemed too tired to notice as he slumped onto a bench in front of the fire.

“But of course,” the lady said, moving closer to Kate, who stood slightly apart.

Kate whispered something in her ear. Lady Walsh’s face registered only a moment’s surprise. “Please, gentlemen, help yourself to the food whilst we wait out the storm. Lord Walsh will give you instructions about the evening’s activities. Young Master Gough and I shall return shortly.” She smiled warmly at Kate as she motioned for her to follow.

Neither of them noticed that John Frith’s head had slumped forward into unconsciousness.

“Trim the mainsail,” the captain shouted as he spotted Sand Point. There was a scurrying of legs up the mainmast as the
Siren’s Song
slid silently into
Bristol Channel toward the jutting promontory, its large, square sail suddenly slack-jawed.

They were early. Too much daylight left to see the signal beacons at Worleburg Hill, and still light enough the see the ship’s name painted on the starboard side. He ordered the lines draped carelessly over the side to obscure the freshly gilded letters of the
Siren’s Song.

“Drop anchor here,” he shouted. The boat rocked gently, its black mizzenmast sail now out of sight too, less than a league from the shallow waters of the inlet. Just another idled fishing boat, plying the rich waters off the channel and not the fastest ship in English waters—that’s what the king’s men would see. But truth be told, the little thirty-ton caravel with its crew of ten and four black sails could outrun anything that gave chase except a Spanish galleon—and maybe that, too, if the pursuer was too heavily gunned. She was beautiful and she was fast, and she belonged to him.

And that last was why Tom Lasser loved her.

But the lone cannon hidden behind the innocent-looking porthole and speed aside, it made him nervous to be sitting here like some great black swan in plain sight of any curious customs agent. What was more, in the western sky behind them great gray clouds were humping in a line that ran around the bend toward the mainland. His left wrist, broken some years back in a skirmish that he’d been unable to run from, still ached when a storm threatened. It was better than any shaman.

It ached now.

An early September gale at her back could trap the
Siren’s Song
in the cove, maybe even drive her landward, stranding her in shallow waters permanently. He thought about breaking out the small boats and off-loading his cargo early, stashing it in the cove, and any other time he would have.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. The mute woman who kept his cabin appeared on board. The first mate eyed her disapprovingly, and, mumbling under his breath, began to fiddle with the anchor rope. Lasser looked at him with a frown and the mumbling stopped. More than once he’d had to set the crew aright about the presence of a woman on board, especially a woman who’d had her tongue cut out by the good men of her village. But Captain Lasser paid his crewmen well enough to overlook their superstitions, and each soul on board had signed or marked with an X his agreement to her presence.

The storm must have drawn her on deck. For the most part, she stayed out of sight in the quarters below. He didn’t know about the scrying; maybe
she did see visions in still water, but he knew that she was half starved and whimpering when he found her bleeding and moaning in a ditch. The men had used her for their pleasure before they punished her for trafficking with the devil, apparently unafraid that if she was really a witch, she might shrivel their balls to peas.

He had taken her back to his rooms and fed her and sent for a surgeon to cauterize her bleeding stump of a tongue, only to find a few weeks later, when she was healed and he tried to send her away, that she would not go. They must have made a sight on the docks, with him shooing her away as one would try to shoo a stray cat and her just standing there, taking a step every time he took a step, as though they were attached at the ankles. In the end he had waved his arms in the air and walked away.

She had followed him onto the ship.

At first he’d ignored her. But soon when his linen and his quarters were clean, his food actually eatable, he’d come to accept her presence with something like gratitude.

“What do your witch bowls tell you, Endor?” Endor—the name he’d given her, for she was apparently illiterate as well as dumb and could not write her name. “Is it going to storm?”

She pointed to the horizon. A bolt of lightning zigzagged across the sky.

“Right.” The captain laughed. “Looks like a sign to me.”

The first mate spoke up, his mouth twitching nervously. Tom didn’t know whether it was Endor or the storm that made him so nervous. “We could just lash the cargo together and set it afloat. Most of the barrels would wash ashore,” he said.

Tom knew the ship’s manifest said grain and Flanders cloth, and a few spices, but what really lay in the hold was Spanish wine and English Bibles. He’d planned to off-load some of it in one of the little quiet anchorages in Greenwich or before—the North Sea coast had many out-of-the-way creeks where at low water the crew could walk the cargo to shore—but a customs tidewaiter had joined the ship at Gravesend to keep them honest and stayed with them all the way to London. There had been no chance before Bristol Channel. They were supposed to pick up a cargo here as well—linsey-woolsey, woven and exported without tax by the many cottage industries from Gloucestershire. He’d already paid a bribe of thirty pounds at Mother Grindham’s place, Bristol quayside, for the customs agents to be absent when he picked up the cloth. He’d just added it on to the shipping costs—still cheaper for the cottagers than having to pay the king’s export tax.

The waters of the cove settled to a dead calm. The sky had darkened now, as the clouds crept closer, their heavy load turning them bruise-blue. Thirty pounds was little enough to pay to avoid risk of being trapped here. His first mate looked at him anxiously, pointed to the western horizon.

“Say the word, Cap’n.”

Tom shook his head. “No, I think it’ll go around. It’ll be dark enough in another hour. When we see the beacon, we’ll send the boats to shore with the cargo.”

But Tom didn’t think the storm was going around. Thing was, he had more than cargo to take on. He’d promised Henry Monmouth that he’d pick up a passenger, and Monmouth had saved his bacon too many times for Tom to let him down if he could help it. Besides, they did a lot of business together and Captain Lasser enjoyed a reputation that said he could be relied upon to deliver. There were other ships and other masters Monmouth could turn to on a whim. One merchant had already built his own “coaster,” the
Dorothy Fulford
, boasting he could pay for it in less than a year from his smuggling profits alone. He wouldn’t want Monmouth to take such a notion into his head.

He glanced at the spot on the railing where Endor had been standing, but she had slipped below as quietly as a shadow.

“Tell the men to secure the rigging and get ready to ride out a storm,” he said.