The Maiden's Hand (31 page)

A stiff wind snatched at the flames before they engulfed Oliver. With the hot breath of the fire on his face, he closed his eyes and thought again of Lark and the child he would never know.

“Hell and damnation,” muttered the executioner.

“Wind’s not going to soften today,” said his assistant with a nervous stutter.

Oliver opened his eyes and gave the hooded men a censorious look. “I’ve resigned myself to becoming a martyr. At this rate we could be all afternoon at it.”

“Bring me gunpowder,” the executioner yelled. His voice was hoarse, his accent common; he was probably a convict offered reprieve in exchange for turning murderer. He seemed a young man, but within the slits of his hood, his eyes appeared ancient.

The crowd cheered at the mention of gunpowder. It was used when fire alone would not suffice, and it added great drama to the spectacle. Avid faces peered through the feeble threads of smoke. People pressed against the rail at the edge of the pit.

“Death to the heretic, Oliver de Lacey!” someone shouted.

“Oh, spare me from the curses of idiots,” Oliver yelled back. “Fie, sir, you have the wit of an elf.”

“You’ll burn in hell,” the man bellowed.

“Kiss my breech.” Oliver regretted that he could not accompany the words with an appropriate gesture.

“Glory to God in the highest!” called a new voice.

And many people, many more than Oliver had expected, called for a reprieve.

“Burn in hell, Oliver de Lacey,” screeched an old crone.

He squinted at her through the wisps of smoke. For a moment her eyes startled him, for they were the same wide, rainy gray as—He shook his head. There was no resemblance.

The unwashed hag, her teeth black and sparse, cursed him again, shaking her fist. “Burn in hell, Oliver de Lacey!”

“Get thee to a barnyard with the other molting geese, old mother,” he said, then let his gaze sweep the pressing mob. “What terrible crime did I commit that
this
must be my last vision on earth?”

The crowd roared with laughter.

Oliver could not resist playing to them. “Most martyrs get to see visions of a host of angels. I get a vile, irksome scold. Jesu! Someone bring a shield to hide her face!”

By that time the executioner had set fat bags of gunpowder on the crackling wood. One of the sacks ignited with a hiss.

Oliver gritted his teeth, bracing himself to be torn apart by the explosion.

A fount of yellow smoke billowed upward. The smoke was as thick as a velvet curtain, rising dark and solid before Oliver’s eyes. The screeching harridan, and gradually the rest of the crowd, disappeared from view.

Oliver closed his smarting eyes. He had never seen gunpowder produce such thick, sparkless smoke.

Like a last, low blow, the breathlessness started. Ah. So the sickness would kill him after all. Why had he thought he could cheat it? It was almost a comfort to be slain by a familiar enemy rather than a strange one.

He felt himself slipping down and down the narrow black passageway. He had been here before. But that time there had been a pinprick of brightness to light his way back.

Now all was black and infinitely empty.

He used his last strength to whisper a single word:
“Lark!”

Slipping under the rail, Lark plunged into the bank of smoke. It rose so thick from the bags of powder Belinda had prepared that it was like stepping behind a screen. Her tattered robe, bought from a beggar woman for the price of a silver shilling, caught sparks from the flames.

“Get back, you flea-witted old drab!” a drunkard called.

“That gunpowder’s about to blow!” yelled someone else. A low roar of confusion buzzed from the spectators.

Lark could no longer see the crowd. “Kit!” She ignored the hecklers. “Kit, are you there?”

“I’m here.” Enshrouded by the yellow fog, he sounded breathless. “I think it worked. Jesu! He’s unconscious!” Looking frightened and anonymous in his executioner’s mask and hood, Kit had already unchained Oliver.

His slim assistant, similarly hooded, choked out a sob. “He’s dead already!”

“No, Belinda!”
Lark spat, furious with terror. “Hurry. The smoke bombs won’t last forever.” The three of them took longer than they had planned, for they had not counted on Oliver being immobile. They wrestled him
into the most concealing garment they’d been able to find—a monk’s robes.

Kit and Belinda cast off their black hoods and masks and let the fire burn the garments. “Make way!” Lark screeched, bullying a path in the crowd with her cane. “This clerk is ill! Make way! He needs air!”

Lark prayed that in the confusion no one would see that they crept seemingly out of a cloud. She glanced back over her shoulder. Huge, impenetrable billows of yellow smoke continued to pour from the sacks of false gunpowder. Bless Belinda. She had remembered her formula for sparkless smoke.

Kit carried Oliver in his arms like a child. Or a dead man.

Please let him be all right, Lark thought as they rushed past St. Bartholomew’s. Please, please, please.

“It’s a bloody miracle!” someone yelled.

Certain they had been found out, Lark prepared to run. She looked back. The smoke had cleared sufficiently to reveal the naked stake.

“The hand of God snatched him up to heaven,” someone proclaimed.

“Praise Jesus Christ!”

“Not even leaving his mortal remains for relics!”

“We are blessed this day!”

“It is a miracle!”

People fell to their knees. Oliver was declared a martyr, and many converted on the spot to the Reformed faith. Fearful, bewildered priests waved their hands and exhorted the people to stay calm, trying unsuccessfully to stifle the adulation.

As they left the field and delved into the shadows of the city wall along Fleet Ditch, Lark felt the strangest sensation. A twist deep in her belly. A gush of warmth.

Belinda, agile in her tight black leggings and tunic, put her arms around Lark. “You look terrible.”

“It has been a long day,” Lark said faintly. Then she remembered her costume. The blackened wax she had put on her teeth tasted foul. The beggar woman’s robes held a terrible odor. “Is Oliver all right?”

“He’d better be,” said Kit. “This is a lot of trouble to take for a corpse.”

They made it to the river and into a waiting lighter-boat. Kit cast off. Belinda and Lark bent over Oliver. His face was smudged with soot. Lark cradled his head between her hands and dusted away some of the blackness. How pale he looked, save around his mouth. His lips were blue.

“Oliver!” she said, grateful for the high gust of wind that blew them downstream, hurrying them out into the crowd of boats, where they could blend in. “Oliver!”

She sprinkled river water on his face. He coughed out stale air, whooped in a deep breath and blinked up at her.

“Jesus save me!” he said. “I have died and gone to hell!”

Lark frowned and cocked her head.

“Get back, you harpy!” Oliver said, trying to twist away from her, nearly capsizing the boat in the process.

Lark laughed with sheer joy. She spat out the blackened wax and threw back her hood so that her hair spilled free.

The look on his face would linger in her mind forever. “Lark!” His voice was strange—at once strangled and thick and exultant.

“Yes, my love. We’re taking you to a safe place.”

He grinned at Kit and Belinda. “I take it you two had a part in this.”

“Hell and damnation,” Kit said, using his rough convict’s accent.

“My sister and best friend, executioners?” Blissful
wonder shone in Oliver’s eyes. “Good show, you two. I had no idea.”

“You were cocky enough thinking you
were
going to die,” said Belinda, brushing a tear from her eye and pretending it was dust. “If you’d thought you had a chance to escape, you would have been insufferable.”

“And you would have given us away,” Kit added.

Oliver sat up, put his hand beneath Lark’s chin and kissed her. It was the sweetest, most magical kiss she had ever experienced, for she had never thought to see him alive again. Even when a cramp banded around her midsection, she only smiled.

“I presume you’ve changed your mind about my taking the easy way out,” Oliver said.

She truly did want to tell him—that she had loved and trusted him right from the start, loved him with forbidden intensity, loved every wonderful, anguished, frustrating moment she spent with him.

But she could not speak. The pain came in earnest now, sweeping her body like a forest fire, doubling her over.

Kit took out a flask and offered it to Oliver. “Claret?”

“Beshrew the wine,” Oliver said, staring goggle-eyed at Lark. “The baby’s coming.”

“I
t’s a girl,” Belinda whispered, tiptoeing out of the bedchamber at Hatfield.

“Who’s a girl?” Oliver muttered, dragging his hands down his stubbled face. Despite considerable risk, the Princess Elizabeth had given them shelter at an outbuilding on the grounds of Hatfield, even offering the services of her own physician, who quickly deferred to the village midwife. Lark’s travail had lasted through the night and most of the next day. Oliver had weathered it in a state of hideous anxiety, pacing and swearing and generally making a nuisance of himself.

“Your
baby
,” Belinda said with a weary, happy laugh. “You have a little daughter, Oliver, and an ill-tempered mort she is, so far. Would you like to see her?” She took his hand and led him into the darkened chamber. It smelled of herbal ointments and blood, and for a moment he wanted to run away. Lark lay propped against a bank of pillows, a bundle in her arms. She was pale, with damp strands of hair plastered to her brow and cheeks. Her eyes no longer
seemed the color of rain but were a light blue-gray like the sun-struck sea in high summer.

He sank to his knees beside the bed. Uncertainty played havoc with his emotions. “Hello, my love.”

She looked different in subtle ways—her face suffused with contentment and fatigue, her eyes dreamy and distant as if she dwelt in a place beyond his reach. In sooth she had gone away from him,
had
experienced the miracle of birth, something he could never share.

A terrible worry nagged at Oliver. She had professed her love, but that had been when they were both sure he was done for. Did she really mean it, or had she said so only to give him comfort at the last?

He didn’t know. His tormented mind burned with the question he dared not ask. He simply didn’t know.

She angled the bundle toward him. “Greet your daughter, Oliver.”

With a shaking hand, he moved back the blanket to see a wizened purple-and-red face, the mouth open, emitting a mewling sound.

“That’s
our child?”

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

“No!” But he couldn’t take his eyes off the elfin face. Infinitely gentle, absolutely terrified, and trying to hide his fear, he half sat on the bed and circled them in his arms.

The child ceased its crying. “More than beautiful. If I had not been up all night going mad with worry, I would think of a better word.”

He prayed he had said the right thing. He feared he had not, for Lark simply sat still beside him, gazing down into the face of their child.

Oliver began to sweat, thinking the worst, that she had indeed lied to him about loving him.

The silence lengthened.

He nearly choked on dread.

“I do love you, Oliver,” Lark said, looking up at him.

He sent her a crooked smile. “I knew that.”

The christening took place in a small chapel in an upper chamber of Hatfield.

While Lark stood awaiting Kit and Belinda, who would be the baby’s godparents, she stared at the large, wheel-shaped window and contemplated the past several days.

A dark wind blew across England. People whispered that the queen had taken to her bed. Some of her ministers were madly trying to devise a way to keep the Catholic succession in place. A few dared to suggest that the not-yet-widowed king of Spain should wed the Princess Elizabeth. Many more simply abandoned the queen altogether, shamelessly fleeing the Palace of St. James and crowding the roads to Hatfield. It was all a rather pitiful end to Mary’s reign.

It did not help that Londoners claimed a miracle had occurred at Smithfield. It did not help that Wynter Merrifield, declared an outlaw and renegade by the queen, had drummed up a band of mercenaries and was scouting the countryside in search of Lark.

But in the bright chamber of Hatfield House, Lark stood above the clamor of favor seekers. It was quiet, peaceful. The huge round window, set with colored glass in the shape of a Tudor rose, let in streams of jewel-toned sunlight. The baptismal font was a circle of still water in a shallow brass basin.

Oliver stepped into the room, the baby sleeping in his arms. “I did it,” he said.

“Did what?” Lark attempted to keep a solemn expression on her face.

“Changed her—you know.” His ears reddened. At last the unblushing Oliver de Lacey had been taught to blush—by his daughter. “What a mess she makes for such a little thing.”

“Where are Kit and Belinda?”

“They should be along any moment now.” Oliver swayed gently back and forth, a habit he had developed from holding his daughter through crying jags each night. “I wonder if Bess will come. I sent word to her. I heard she was out reading in the garden.”

Lark pictured the princess seated under her favorite oak tree, ignoring the encroaching hullaballoo.

“She has other things on her mind,” Lark reminded him. “Any moment she expects to be told of her sister’s death.” Lark felt a stirring of anguish. In important ways, Mary’s reign had been a disaster. She had lost Calais, England’s last foothold in France. Her crusade to restore the monasteries had drained the treasury. She had surrounded herself with hated Spaniards.

But in a quiet moment in a private chapel, the woman, not the queen, had won Lark’s sympathy.

Mary would die alone and unhappy, while Lark had every fulfillment, even those she had never dared to dream of. She had a husband she loved to distraction, a perfect daughter and the whole, deliriously wonderful de Lacey family.

Shouts and blaring trumpets sounded at the gates.

“More favor seekers, no doubt.”

Lark looked down at her hands and noticed that she had clasped them together, the knuckles white. Before her happiness could be complete, she had to conclude one bit of unfinished business.

She had to confess to Oliver, had to tell him the whole truth about the past.

“Oliver?”

He kept his fond gaze on the baby. “Aye, my love? Did you notice how she stares at me? She knows I’m her papa, the one who loves her beyond all—”

“Oliver, I must tell you something.”

He must have heard the strain in her tone, for he glanced up. “Yes?”

“It’s about—” She broke off. The temptation to look away in shame was great, but she forced herself to hold his gaze. “It is about Wynter.”

“Go on,” he said with great reluctance.

“That night—”

A muscle leaped in his jaw. “It matters not.”

“It does. I should not keep secrets from you.”

He made a hissing sound as if he had burned himself. “Then don’t.”

She nodded, feeling the color drain from her face. “I must tell you everything. Three years ago, when Wynter first came to Blackrose…” She paused to take a shuddery breath.

“He
raped
you?”

Lark hesitated. She knew she could continue to lie, knew Oliver would offer sympathy, not censure, if he believed she had been the innocent victim. But she could speak nothing but the truth.

She must tell him the prim little religious maid had been a mask; inside she was as corrupt as any Southwark lightskirt.

“Oliver, he did not force me. I found him fascinating. He was witty, attractive. He made
me
feel attractive. But it was wrong. I sinned. I betrayed Spencer.”

“Ah, Lark—”

“Wynter used me, and I allowed it. So long as I was
worried Spencer might find out, I was Wynter’s prisoner.” She searched Oliver’s face for censure, for disgust, but saw only sympathy glowing in his eyes. “I—I thought you should know,” she finished, feeling exhausted.

“And now I do.” He took a step closer, smiled, and kissed her, the baby gently pressed between them. “Do you think, after all we have endured, that it could possibly matter in the least?”

A cry broke from her as she flung her arms around his neck. The healing warmth of his love flowed into her. As she covered his laughing face with kisses, shouts drifted up from the courtyard.

Oliver went to a side panel of the window, hoisted himself to the waist-high embrasure and looked down.

He emitted a foul curse that brought Lark rushing to his side. Far below, on the stone courtyard, a guard rushed toward the armory. He was bleeding from the arm and shouting orders.

“Oliver!” Cold fear invaded her. “What—”

The door burst open. Like a black flame, Wynter swept into the room. His sword was drawn, and a menacing troop of soldiers guarded his back.

“Sweet Jesu,” Lark whispered.

Oliver thrust the baby into her arms and drew his own sword. “You didn’t learn your lesson the first time, Wynter,” he said. “I warned you to stay away from my wife.”

“You can’t fight him,” Lark protested. She felt vulnerable, defenseless, with the baby in her arms. “There are too many of them!”

Oliver smiled, never taking his eyes off Wynter. “Don’t you know I’d fight an army for you, Lark? Don’t you know I’d win?”

Wynter lunged. Oliver feinted back against a paneled
wall. The point of Wynter’s sword stuck into the wood. He jerked it out and thrust again. Shouting in Spanish and English, the mercenaries boiled into the room.

Lark clutched the baby to her breast. She tried to scream, but terror numbed her throat. She cast about for a means to help Oliver. The room had no furniture save the makeshift font and a long seat built beneath the broad window. Her free hand stole up to grip the brooch fastened at her shoulder.

Oliver’s blade slashed out, drawing blood from one of the soldiers. Like a pack of dogs they surrounded him, cornered him. He edged back toward the window and leaped up on the ledge.

A commotion erupted at the door. Lark spied Kit and Belinda, both armed to the teeth. Kit’s old-fashioned longsword scythed down two soldiers at the doorway. Belinda’s thin rapier, wielded deftly despite her heavy velvet skirts, stung a Spaniard in the face. He howled, sinking to his knees and clutching his eye.

Despite the imprisonment that had sapped his strength, Oliver fought like a champion. His lithe dance steps seemed regulated by some smooth inner rhythm. He met every slice and thrust of Wynter’s sword. He stayed high, with the window at his back. Light from the colored glass bathed him in ruby and emerald. He looked somehow greater than human, godlike, invincible.

Yet all that separated him from thin air was that fragile glass. Wynter forced him back against the window. Lark felt a scream build in her chest. At the impact of Oliver’s shoulder and hip, the leaded panes bowed outward with a high-pitched wrenching sound.

Without warning, Wynter ducked beneath Oliver’s flashing blade. He landed on the window ledge. Instead of
attacking Oliver from his new position, he knocked Lark’s coif askew and grabbed her by the hair. He yanked back her head and pressed the edge of his sword to her neck.

Her shrill yelp froze everyone in the room. The touch of Wynter’s sword did not hurt, but she knew that with the slightest pressure, he could open her neck.

In the stillness, she heard her own heart beating and the kittenish sounds of the baby, getting hungry. She felt the cool smoothness of the dagger in her hand, concealed in the folds of the baby’s swaddling. She heard the rasp of the mercenaries panting in exertion and, not so distant now, the clear blaring of a trumpet.

A herald bringing news, she thought.

She wondered if she would live to hear it.

“Drop your swords,” Wynter said. He stepped down from the window seat and shoved himself directly behind Lark.

Oliver’s blade clattered to the floor. Kit and Belinda obeyed, as well.

Rage seared Lark. “You are a hateful, vindictive man, Wynter!”

“Best watch what you say, my dear.” His silky whisper warmed her ear. He teased her with the sword tip, caressing her vulnerable neck. “The queen has been brought to bed,” he explained. “Some say to give birth to an heir.” In that same lilting voice, he said, “Take it, Diego.”

One of the soldiers moved forward.

“I’ll send you to hell, you mad whoreson,” Oliver said in a voice that thrummed with fury.

Lark felt the movement of Wynter’s chest against her back as he laughed in triumph. “You
live
in hell, my lord. I put you there. I put you there the night I took Lark’s honor, when it was
my
name she cried out, when it was
me
she
wanted. You never had a virgin bride, because I took that from you.”

The color dropped from Oliver’s face. Lark dared not breathe. Oliver had said he did not care, but to hear Wynter proclaim his mastery of her drove the insult deep.

At last Oliver spoke. “You mean less than nothing to her now, Wynter. You destroyed any tenderness she might have had for you.”

“The queen is dead!”
The shout rose from the courtyard. Footsteps echoed in the stairwells.

Lark felt the sword falter against her neck.

“Long live Queen Elizabeth!”

The cries gathered strength, echoing across the gardens and through the halls of Hatfield.