The Heretic’s Wife (18 page)

Kate had accepted the dress with gratitude—as well as the clean rags and belt her kind hostess provided—and joined the little smuggling party with some trepidation. But whatever Lady Walsh had said to Swinford and Lord Walsh, they had treated her as if they had known all along she was John Gough’s sister. She wondered if Frith had also been told that his traveling companion had not been who he thought. Though what did it matter what he thought of her? After tonight she would never see him again anyway. Though pity that was. She’d liked him—a lot. She couldn’t help but wonder how he would have responded to Kate rather than her brother John. Would he have had that same easy manner, that same charming smile that offered ready friendship?

Lord Walsh and Swinford tended the fire as it spewed hissing tendrils of orange against the night sky. In spite of the curling smoke, the air had that swept-clean smell that it carries after a storm. The rain had stopped, and the clouds, though still backlit in the distance every now and then, were breaking up. A full moon floated among them, like the ghost ship whose shadow they could see riding on the moonlit sea.

“Do you think they see us?” Kate asked, trying hard to keep the excitement from her voice, forgetting all about the discomfort of her woman’s curse.

“See us! How could they not, with that great silver orb hanging over us? The customs men can probably see us too.”

“Everything will be all right,” Lord Walsh reassured them. “This captain
knows what he’s doing. He’s probably bribed the customs people to look the other way.”

The moon slid behind a cloud, and the sea and the ship vanished. The world narrowed down to just Swinford, Lord and Lady Walsh, and herself within the small circle of firelight. Even the sea disappeared except for its gentle lapping against the pebbled shore.

“Do you think Master Frith will recover?” Kate asked.

Lady Walsh gave her a knowing smile. “I wouldn’t worry, my dear, he’s young. He’ll—”

But before she could finish her reassurance the moon shed its diaphanous caul and reemerged in the open black sky to reveal that the ship had calved. A small boat glided toward them, riding low in the water. As it neared, Kate made out the figures of two men, their arms moving in rhythmic rowing motion.

She was wondering how four people and two of them women could carry such a heavy load as weighed down the boat when behind her she heard a rustle of leaves. A hay wain pulled by four dray horses appeared. The wagon wheels were rag wrapped as were the horses’ feet so that they could move soundlessly through the meadow and onto the beach. The wagon had a driver and three other burly men besides. And surely enough, just as Lady Walsh had promised, there were three women, each with a large bundle on her lap. The driver reined in the horses just outside the circle of firelight. The horses neighed gently, as if to signal their familiarity with the place.

The small boat landed on the beach, its bottom crunching against the pebbles as the two men got out and dragged it onto shore. The inhabitants of the wagon jumped down and began to unload and then reload the wagon, each movement carefully planned and rehearsed for speed and efficiency. Feeling awkward and not knowing exactly where she should fit into such a dance, Kate watched Lady Walsh for some clue. But she was busy talking to the tall man who’d manned the front of the little skiff. Kate could catch only a word here and there but enough to figure he was the captain and Lady Walsh was explaining to him that he would not be picking up his passenger after all.

She saw that the others were forming a line between the wagon and the boat and handing down the cargo to the driver of the wagon who was stacking it. She took her place at the end, closest to the boat where the back rower was handing off the fardels. They began with the lightest bundles on top and by the time they got to the heaviest crates—which Kate supposed held the
books, though they were marked as spices—Lady Walsh came to stand opposite her and together they did the work of one strong man.

The captain stood off to the side talking to Lord Walsh. They exchanged papers and Lord Walsh handed him a purse, which the captain weighed with a smile and a toss of his head. Something in his confident manner, in the way the moonlight caught the flash of white teeth in a wide curved smile, treaded on the hem of memory. She was sure she’d seen him before. But no, of course not. Where would she have met a sea captain, and a smuggling sea captain at that?

They were unloading the last one, a small crate marked with the letter
B
. Kate and Lady Walsh reached for it—from its weight, she guessed it held books too—when the captain strode over and lifted it from their hands to Lord Walsh’s.

“Take care of this one. It’s going to Lady Anne. I was told that you would see that it was personally delivered to Hever Castle.”

“You were told correctly. We’ll not take it to the church at Worle. I’ll take it back to Little Sodbury.”

Behind them the horses snorted their impatience.

“They’re in a hurry to get this night’s work behind them and get back to the stable,” the captain said. “And we’d be wise to do the same. Tell the passenger I’ll be back on the next moon, if he can wait.”

“We’ll be looking forward to seeing you,” Lord Walsh said. “This is dangerous work, you’re doing, Tom, but worthwhile.”

The captain shrugged off the compliment. “I’m compensated well enough. The League sees to that. And as to the danger.” He smiled and touched the short sword at his belt. “I’ve a companion at my side more constant than most.”

His hand rested on it lightly, almost caressingly. Kate gave a little shudder, thinking how easily he might plunge it into a man’s flesh. His cuff flowed over the silver hilt in a white froth of lace, half covering his palm, leaving only the long thin fingers exposed against the metal.
The lace cuff! The long thin fingers resting lightly around metal.
Suddenly Kate knew where she had seen that lazy smile, that swaggering manner—and a lace cuff, albeit somewhat begrimed, not snowy white as this one. She gave a little gasp of surprise.

He turned his gaze on her. “Mistress, are you well?”

“Thank you, sir, quite well,” she said, dropping her gaze, hoping to avoid recognition.

“Have we met?”

“I’m sure not,” she said, moving toward the wagon.

“Hmm,” he said, his face a mask of concentration, then a flash of white teeth and he strode toward her; tucking his finger under Kate’s chin, he lifted it to look her full in the face. It was a bold and disrespectful gesture—but what else could she expect from such a man?

“Mary! No . . . not Mary!” he said. And then he threw back his head and laughed and asked like an old friend who happened upon her at some social affair and not an outlaw—two outlaws—courting danger beneath a smuggler’s moon, “How fares your brother, the printer. Is he well?”

She jerked her head as though she were shrugging off a fly. He dropped his hand. “My name is Kate,” she said. “My brother is out of prison, but he’s no longer a printer. He has retired with his wife and child to the country.”

The captain laughed. There was a hint of mockery in the laughter. “Well then, Kate, he’s smarter than I thought. I feared he had that something in his nature that drives a man to martyrdom as though it were some great prize of honor.”

“And you have not that something in your nature? What is the penalty for smuggling Bibles?”

“The same as for smuggling spices and wine. It’s all contraband to me—contraband and profit.”

“So you will swear whatever oath is put before you if you are caught?”

“I don’t intend to be caught,” he said, striding away from her.

“Don’t let Captain Lasser bluff you, Mistress Gough. He’s not as mercenary as he sounds. I’ve known him to take some risks that no ordinary man would take to serve a more honorable cause than profit,” Lord Walsh said.

The captain slapped the lord on the back as though they were equals. “There is no more honorable cause than profit, my friend,” he said, as he jumped into the small skiff and picked up the oars. The boat rode much higher in the water now, the cloth being much less weighty than the Bibles. He waved and signaled the other rower to push off.

“There is that risk that profits the soul and not the pocketbook,” Lady Walsh called to the departing skiff.

“I never dispute a lady,” the captain called back, “even when I have the time.”

“God’s speed to the
Siren’s Song,
Tom,” Lord Walsh called, and then turned to the little shore party. “We’d best be off too. The priest of St. Martin’s at Worle will give us out and go home.”

Kate watched as the little boat headed into the silver wake of the setting moon, heard the waves lapping against its hull. The hilt of the captain’s sidearm flashed in the moonlight. She frowned, remembering the feel of his fingers on her chin, and wiped at it with her shawl.

The eastern horizon had begun to lighten by the time the smuggling party returned to Little Sodbury. Exhausted, Kate followed Lady Walsh to her bedchamber, wondering where and when she would be able to sink into blessed oblivion. They had carried the crates and bundles up the staircase to the octagonal turret in the little church at Worle where they would “rest” for a few days among the rafters of the church roof until such a time as they would secretly be emptied out parcel by parcel, cask by cask, to the various distributors and buyers who would come for them.

The only one they kept in their possession was the small box marked with a
B,
which Lady Walsh now secreted beneath her bed. “It’s for Lady Anne Boleyn,” she whispered. “And it’s not the first one,” she added as, rummaging in her cupboard, she pulled out a clean linen shift and handed it to Kate. “They say she’s very reform minded.”

“But you mean—”

“Yes. And she may one day be queen, if the king has his way. Who knows where that might lead?” She lit two candles from the lamp beside her bed and gave one to Kate. “I’ve put you in the chamber where Master Tyndale himself stayed when he was tutor to our children. They were well past the age when they needed tutoring, but his ideas were so stimulating, and he was doing such good work in this little room. It’s quite cozy. You’ll be comfortable there.”

She led Kate down the corridor and up a winding stair to a small room furnished with a bed and a desk and a chair. A pale gray light from a narrow window crept into the room, revealing a pen and inkwell on the desk. Probably the very one Tyndale used when he stayed here.

“I’ll leave you to your rest, my dear. We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said. Then added with a weary smile, “It’s already tomorrow, I guess. I think I may be getting too old for these little adventures. I’m going to grab a few winks, too, as soon as I check on Master Frith.”

Kate collapsed onto the bed and blew out her candle. She lay in the gray light, listening to the stirrings of the servants rousing to their dawn chores, and feared she was too tired to sleep. It had been, all in all, she thought, the
most exciting day and night of her life, and how she longed to tell her brother about it. But he would probably only scold her and remind her of her promise. Perhaps Master Frith would be well enough tomorrow that she could tell him about the grand adventure he had missed.

At least now she would have some inventory to take back to London to sell. She would do it discreetly at first, but if the king’s favorite had Lutheran sympathies, it was probably just a matter of time before they could sell openly again. Maybe John and Mary could return and John could reopen the print shop. He would be glad she had not abandoned it then. Things could be as they were before.

But as fatigue overtook her the last image in her mind was not of Master John Frith or of her brother John, but of Captain Tom Lasser with his dark eyes and mocking laugh. She’d never met a man so reckless or so arrogant, she decided, so completely devoid of honor, despite what Lord Walsh had said. She pitied his wife—if that unfortunate woman existed—for he was sure to find a hangman’s noose at the end of his adventures.

Turkies, herisies, hops and beer
All came to England in one year.