“I hope the night’s rest has cleared your mind to see the wisdom of cooperating,” he said.
“I have tried—” she began, but she was so weak her words came out slurred, and this humiliation seemed harder to bear than all the rest.
Impatient, he did not wait for more. “Here are your choices. You can sign the statement, in which case I will immediately escort you to a room upstairs, where a breakfast of fresh bread and Dutch cheese awaits you along with clean clothes, and you will see your husband sent home this very day, unharmed. Or you can refuse to cooperate, in which case I will stretch your body on that rack like a hog’s hide until your shoulders and ankles spring from their sockets. Your screams will not interest me. Only your signature. You have one minute to decide.”
She was almost thankful. No more torture of thinking. “I do not need a minute.”
“Good.” A slight smile.
She struggled not to slur the next words. They might be her last. “This morning, my lord, I find I am not hungry.”
His rage was all the worse for being controlled.
She willed control, too. She had decided just before dawn, remembering Richard’s words.
“Don’t believe him…”
He was right. Grenville would never release the man who had killed his father. And he could not be holding Adam. If he were, he would have used him, too, to threaten her.
They dragged her to the rack. Tied the straps. Fitted the screws. She willed her mind to wind inside the flowers of her garden.
Pale pink rose petals, warmed by the sun
…the leather straps cut the skin of her ankles and wrists.
Sprightly blue speedwells, jeweled by the dew
…the long screws creaked…her body was elevated, suspended…her legs spread, her head lolled, her panic roiled…
Maroon veins of iris…blood red gillyflower…
21
Lord and Master
June 1556
T
he
Elizabeth
hit the bottom of the wave trough with a bone-shuddering crash. Adam and his crew staggered to keep their footing and their handholds. The next monster wave picked up the ship and hurled her into the sky. Everyone hung on, suspended in air, stomachs sickeningly lifted, waiting for the next shuddering descent. Rain lashed their faces. Wind screeched in the rigging. The ship crashed down and men reeled, some tumbling to the deck. One cried out to Jesus.
Adam, at the wheel high on the sterncastle deck, swiped rain from his eyes and looked over his shoulder at the damage that threatened to sink his ship. The mizzenmast had snapped and crashed onto the leeward rail, trailing its canvas and rigging in the churning foam. Waves pounded the tangled mess, half drowning it, dragging the
Elizabeth
onto her side. The ship wallowed and slewed as tons of water mercilessly beat the wooden hull. If Adam could not get her under control she could capsize.
“Master Curry,” he yelled to his first mate standing beside him.
Jack Curry, gripping the binnacle for balance, did not hear Adam’s voice above the howl of the storm. Adam shook him by the shoulder and yelled into his ear, “Master Curry, cut loose that spar!”
“Aye, sir!”
Curry staggered away to command the nearest crewmen. At his order, five of them pulled their knives and hacked at the dripping ropes. They stumbled, knocked off balance by the giant seesaw the ship had become. Adam’s knuckles whitened, his grip on the wheel never slackening. The men struggled to their knees, then to their feet, and again sawed the ropes. The last taut line severed with a crack that whipped an end to slash a man’s cheek. The waves snatched the freed mizzenmast with its tangle of shredded sail and rigging, and churned it. Adam and his men watched it hurtle up through the foam as if thrashing in the jaws of a monster. It tumbled away in the black water to their stern, and into oblivion.
Adam felt the ship right itself with a shudder like a dog shaking water off its back.
Another mountainous wave reared up above the rail, about to swamp them. He wrenched the wheel over, turning the ship into the waves. The
Elizabeth
pitched and fell as she cut through the writhing hills of water, but Adam knew he could control her now. Spray flew at his head, his hair shaggy with water. He felt salt sting a gash between his thumb and forefinger, turning his blood to pink water.
Jack Curry, dripping, made his way back to him and shouted, “Captain, we should turn back.”
Adam looked at the men clinging to the rails and to handholds on the mainmast, some white faced, some shaking, like so many ghosts. They were afraid. And angry. They didn’t like him taking them straight out into the storm. They were only hours out of Calais, and if he turned back now they could limp into the French harbor and into warm beds by nightfall. He looked ahead at the black clouds charging him from the west. From home.
The executions have begun,
Cecil had written. Adam shook his head at Curry. “No.”
With that decision, he settled into the motion of the ship, and into that space of calm that surrounded him at times like this. It was like standing in the eye of the storm itself, where there was peace. It wasn’t that he relaxed, for his muscles stayed tight and his mind stayed sharp to every change in pitch of the wind’s keening and every shift of balance underfoot. It was simply that he felt more alive, more in tune with
all
of life, the whole tumultuous world, when he was steering his ship in harmony with it. It was part thrill, part peace, like nothing else.
Not true, he thought. It was like looking into Elizabeth’s eyes.
She was a prisoner of the Queen, again. How was she bearing it? And the poor fellows who had stood with Dudley—his heart bled for them. And raged at the only explanation that made sense.
We were betrayed.
Inside his soaked leather jerkin the letter from Cecil lay next to his breast.
The executions have begun. Peckham and Daniel were hanged, God rest their souls. Kingston was arrested, and on the way to London he killed himself. St. Loe is under house arrest. Courtenay, Bray, Perrot are all in custody, awaiting trial. Ambassador de Noailles has fled. The lady Elizabeth, too, is penned up in her house, under close guard. I know not what fate awaits her.
And this sad litany is but prelude to my sadder song. Your good father, a prisoner in the Tower these many months, is kept still in that forsaken place, and now, it grieves me to tell you, so is his lady wife. Lord Grenville, it is said, is using her very roughly. Indeed, her suffering, as I have learned, would make the angels weep.
I send you these dreadful tidings not to unman you with grief, sir, but to exhort you to bear up by seeking God’s grace to endure, and to assure you that I am at your service, and ever your good friend,
Wm. Cecil
Adam’s grip on the wheel tightened, steering for home.
Everyone I care about. Everyone I love.
A shout. He looked to the foredeck as a bowsprit sheet snapped. The bowsprit sail blew out with a loud, raw rip. The ship bucked. The tattered canvas whipped in the screaming wind like a creature demented.
“Secure the sail!” Adam shouted.
“Secure the sail!” Jack Curry yelled, and men clambered up the ratlines.
Curry loped, lurching, back to Adam’s side. “Turn back now, sir?”
Adam was watching the wind tear at the lateen-rigged sail on the foremast. The furious force of the wind threatened to rip it, too.
“Sir,” Curry yelled, his eyes on the same sail, “if we lose that one we can’t go on.”
“See to your business, Master Curry. Secure the bowsprit sail. Send two men to the hold for spare canvas. Stand by the foremast.”
“Captain, the men—”
“Will do as I say. To your business, Curry. Now.”
Adam turned his face into the teeth of the wind. It screeched in his ears, like a tortured voice wailing,
The executions have begun.
He was sailing home.
“I will not stand in a queue with these fellows,” John Grenville said impatiently to Frances. They stood in the antechamber of the Queen’s apartments with ten or twelve other milling courtiers left to cool their heels.
“Don’t worry,” Frances said, “I’ll get you in before them.” Her status as Mary’s closest friend ensured that privilege. But she had something to ask of John first. If only she could think of a way to broach it without letting on about her real motive. She longed for Adam. This last separation from him seemed endless, ten heavy months so far. It had been bad enough when the witch’s daughter had kept him by her side at Hatfield as he’d recovered from Sturridge’s arrow. It made her ill to think how near he had come to death. But then, recovered, he had launched his ship and sailed away. Gone on business across the Narrow Seas, the servants at his house had told her man Dyer. Yet what could possibly be keeping him away for so long?
This is how people in love suffer,
she told herself with a small thrill.
To lovers, being apart for even a week is hard.
“Who is with her?” John asked.
She turned to him. The Queen, he meant. First things first, she told herself. “Cardinal Pole and Ambassador Renard. With this rebellion terror she will only talk to her most trusted friends.” She added, with some pride, “That’s why it’s so wonderful that she sent for you.”
He nodded, his own satisfaction clear. “But why, exactly? Do you know?”
“The executions, I believe.” She leaned closer to keep the other courtiers from hearing, and whispered, “I think she will put you in charge.”
His eyes widened. To lead the executions of the traitors was a great honor. And it portended even greater rewards to come from the Queen’s hand. Frances felt sure she would elevate her brother from baron to a more exalted rank. Earl, perhaps, or even viscount. Marquis was not out of the question. He deserved it, of that Frances had no doubt. He had captured the traitors so quickly, almost two dozen, and gotten such detailed information from them about their plot. Frances was still astonished at the breadth of the group, from lords to gentlemen to yeomen. Some of the leaders were men she had once considered loyal. Lord Bray, Sir William Courtenay, Sir John Perrot. What a wicked world. And, of course, Elizabeth. Delivering Mary’s heretic sister was the greatest prize of all. A thought struck Frances, making her gasp. “John, that’s it.”
“What is?”
“The commission she wants to give you. You shall lead her sister to the block!”
He looked at her with eyes full of hope. Only a very high-ranking lord would be given the commission of a
royal
execution. “Think you so?”
“Yes! She wrote to her husband giving all the evidence of Elizabeth’s treason. She asked Philip’s permission to execute her.”
“You know this for certain?”
“She dictated the letter to me. I wrote it. And Philip’s courier arrived back from Flanders this very morning.”
He looked so happy, it gave her the courage to ask him her favor. “John, are you still holding the Thornleigh woman?”
He nodded. “I’ll get her confession yet.”
“But do you really need it?”
He gave her a sharp look. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t. Not really. I’m just thinking of how people talk. Unfortunately, the woman has her admirers. I don’t like to hear people say unkind things about you.”
“I’ll do what must be done, gossip be damned.”
“But haven’t you got confessions aplenty to damn Elizabeth without adding Honor Thornleigh’s?”
“Attend to your business, Frances, and I’ll to mine.”
She held her tongue. John was the head of her house. She would not gainsay him. But she wished he would not be so harsh with Adam’s stepmother. Adam would be angry when he heard of it. He might even reprove
her
for it.
If Honor Thornleigh dies,
she thought,
he might never forgive me.
Unbearable thought.
The door of the Queen’s presence chamber opened. Cardinal Pole strode out in a flurry of red silk robes, followed by Renard, the imperial ambassador. With furrowed brows they marched past the waiting courtiers and hurried away.
Jane Dormer, Mary’s lady-in-waiting, stepped out and beckoned to Frances, then led her and John into the royal presence.
“Ah, my dear,” Mary said from her gilt chair. She looked haggard from lack of sleep. She held out her hand to Frances as John went down on one knee. “And you, my good lord. How we cherish old friends in these dark times.”
“Your Majesty,” said Frances, taking Mary’s hand and curtsying, “the Grenvilles are ever your friends indeed.”
“And ever loyal,” said John.
The Queen beckoned him to rise. “What an office you have done me, sir, ferreting out these traitors. We are grateful, and shall show you our pleasure in due course.”
John looked pleased, but before he could reply Mary covered her face with her hands and cried, “I am surrounded by enemies! I cannot move without endangering my crown!”
They both stood silent at the sudden outpouring of emotion. Frances felt pity for her friend, but she knew that such displays made John uncomfortable.
“It is true,” Mary said, taking in their dismay. “I cannot trust the loyalty even of my councilors. And I fear assassins among my attendants. My new confessor…Frances, I had a dream that he is a spy. He means to poison me.”