“Good. The more there, the less here. What’s the situation abroad?”
“In France, Sir Henry Dudley is with us. He has the silver, and will sail the moment we send word. And Throckmorton will raise two hundred men.” After Dudley’s failed rebellion, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton had fled to Paris. Adam went on to report on some of the other exiles. There were hundreds of men, many of wealth and power, like Lord Bedford, who would stand with them, too.
His father clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Good work. Can you ride to London and tell Cecil?”
“For God’s sake, Richard,” Geoffrey said, “let him snatch a bite of bread and a few winks. Look at him—he’s a wreck. He’d fall asleep in the saddle.”
His father smiled. “Aye. Rest tonight with us, Adam. We’re bound for the Hart’s Horn Inn.”
Adam was aware of a sudden silence. The men had stopped working. He turned to see a figure standing in the doorway. The hard-faced lord in green velvet.
“Household furnishings for a mine?” the man said, looking at them with unmasked suspicion.
Adam’s eyes flicked to his father, who said, “A stopover, my lord. I own this property.”
“Unusual warehouse.”
“You take a lively interest in my trade, sir. May I know your name?”
“You may not.”
Adam’s hand slipped to his dagger handle. He saw Geoffrey move slowly to the door to block the man’s retreat.
The man caught both movements and brought his own hand to the hilt of his sword. “I am not alone,” he warned calmly. “Come for me, and ten men who ride with me will cut you down.”
Adam could feel the tension in Powys’s men. They stood expectant, uncertain.
“Trade, eh?” The man looked down at a box near him whose lid had come ajar. He kicked the lid off, revealing the contents. “Are guns your stock in trade?” He added, very quietly, “You could hang for this.”
Adam swallowed. Every box held the evidence. Arquebuses, pistols, swords, pikes, armor, crossbows, and hundreds of arrows.
“My respects, sir,” his father said, bowing. “It’s clear you are a gentleman of high standing and no doubt proud to do service to Her Majesty the Queen. Do you find yourself quite satisfied with the state of the realm?”
The man looked flummoxed. “What?”
The hair stood up on Adam’s neck. His father had decided to take a gamble.
“Happy that the price of everything has doubled in the last few years? Happy with our success in the war with France?”
“Success? You’re either brainsick or incompetent at your underground trade. England’s beaten.”
“Then perhaps it is the burnings that please you? The hundreds of so-called heretics who suffer in the flames, a number unheard of in the days of old King Henry. Or perhaps it’s the sight of poor men arrested, to swing by their necks just for reading a pamphlet.”
“I like none of these things. Is that the appropriate reply?”
Adam wasn’t sure what to make of him.
The man gave a wolfish smile. “Is your name Thornleigh?”
Geoffrey took an audible breath of surprise. The man noted it. “I’m on my way to the Hart’s Horn Inn. I’ve been sent by my cousin, Lord Powys. To meet you.” He grinned. “The name’s Palmer. Sir Arthur Palmer. I have an armory you’ll want to see.”
28
Midsummer Day
June 1558
A
dam threw himself into the work of treason, spending every day in the saddle, and many nights, too. So many prominent men had secretly joined the cause, he was riding to all corners of the county, arranging the stockpiling of weapons and coordinating the communications between gentlemen with armories. The most recent recruit was Sir John Thynne of Longleat, the richest landholder in Wiltshire; the most exhilarating, the officers of the northern garrison of Berwick-upon-Tweed who were tacitly waiting to throw their support to the rebels. Many of the foremost men were friends of Elizabeth, but for her safety they kept their preparations secret from her—if all failed, the treason would be theirs, not hers.
Adam rode from village to town, and manor to manor, constantly hoping that the call would come, the attack would begin, and the Queen would be routed—all before Midsummer Day. But as he sat in on strategy meetings, his frustration became excruciating. There was no finalized plan. Though men throughout the length and breadth of England stood ready and willing to fight, they lacked a central leader, a figure to rally them. And so, no call had come when the morning dawned of the longest day of the year, high midsummer, when the country basked in the lengthened hours of sunlight.
To Adam, it was the darkest day of his life.
“Going to church, sir?”
Having just come down from his room at the inn, Adam was startled by the landlord’s question. The wedding was secret—how could the man know? Frances had arranged the thing, summoning him to this isolated village, and he had arrived after a late-night ride down from Cambridge. She would be there already, in the parish church down the street, preparing and primping.
The landlord was patiently awaiting a reply. “Most folks like to go before they break their fast, is all.”
The feast of St. John, Adam realized. If only his visit to the church could be about just that—mumble a prayer or two, then go on about his business, a free man. If he could say a prayer and have Frances miraculously disappear from his life he would be on his knees, prostrate before the altar. But he had never believed in miracles. He was coldly resigned, telling himself he was hardly the first man to make a loveless marriage. Fellows did it all the time, to obey a father’s command or to move up in the world. Why should he be any different?
“Later,” he told the landlord. He ordered breakfast. He had no appetite for food, but even less for pacing in his room. It was nine o’clock. In an hour he would be standing with Frances before the priest.
Until death do you part…
He was distractedly tearing a piece of bread, forcing his mind onto practicalities, onto how he could continue the stockpiling operation away from Frances’s notice, when the landlord came back.
“A visitor for you, sir.”
“Visitor?”
“Your sister. She’s outside.”
His heart jumped. It could not be Isabel.
He found her at the back of the building on a grassy swath leading down to a stream, standing under a huge willow tree that rose higher than the inn. She hadn’t seen him and her back was to him as she looked at the water. She had pulled up the hood of her cloak, but he would know her anywhere, even without the telltale strands of bright hair. He was stunned to see her. Why was she here? Had she fled again? Was she in danger? Gripped by this fear, he came up behind her and blurted, “What’s happened?”
She whirled around. Her eyes blazed fury. “Treachery, that is what.”
“My God, has someone betrayed you?”
“Betrayal, indeed. Falseness. Rank unfaithfulness!” Throwing back her hood, she tugged off a necklace, the whistle he had given her dangling from it, and hurled it at him. It hit his chest and fell to the ground. “How
could
you?”
It staggered him. Frances. She knew.
“Yes, your sordid secret is out.” Her voice was harsh with contempt. “Your lady’s maid is a cousin of my chamberlain’s stepdaughter. Your lady is apparently overeager, and blabbed.”
He clenched his teeth. “Do not call her my lady.”
“Oh, shall I say your sweetheart? Your dearest? Your darling? How long have you loved her?”
“Love? I hate her.”
“Ha! Is that why you’ve rushed to cobble together this furtive, backstreet wedding? You cannot wait to enjoy her!”
“Good God, if you knew the reason—”
“Oh, I dare say there’s a reason. Is it money? A baron’s sister must bring a handsome dowry. Are you building another ship and want her moneybags?”
“Money?” he shot back. “Her brother is like to cut her off, penniless.”
“How sad. Then perhaps the reason is more of the barnyard variety. Perhaps you
must
marry her before her belly has swollen so huge her kinsmen will hunt you down.”
“Enough!” Damn her. He could have borne the wretched wedding with some shred of dignity if only she had not come. “Why are you here?”
She gasped. “How can you ask that? How, after all we have been to each other? You
dallied
with me, and now you marry another woman. I am the injured party!”
“You!
You
don’t have to make a marriage you loathe. They wanted you to, and I was ready to take you anywhere, brave any danger, to save you from that fate. As for injury, I will bear the scar forever of the arrow I stopped for you. If you want to talk of hurt,” he said, thumping his chest, “look no farther than here.”
“Ah, yes, your past great deeds for my sake. But it seems you have tired of loyalty and faithfulness and care not who sees you for a liar, for now you have chosen
another.
”
“I tell you, I did not choose.”
“You are a free man!”
“As free as a prisoner in chains!
Less
free, because if I escape I doom a friend to death. You call that choice? The choice of the devil. And this devil is forcing me to clamp the chains on myself.”
“Death? What new lie is this?”
“No lie. I have
never
lied to you. I am marrying this woman to buy her silence!”
She gaped at him. “About what?”
He had gone too far to go back. So he told her everything. All about his stepmother’s heresy trial so many years ago. The rescue. Frances’s knowledge of it. And her threat to use it.
“Dear Lord,” Elizabeth whispered in horror. “What a terrible thing to hold over you.”
Now that she knew, Adam felt an overwhelming relief. Just to know that she understood. But at what a price. In place of his anger there was a bleak hollowness. He had told her, and it changed nothing.
“She
is
a devil,” Elizabeth said with a shiver. And then, in a tone of awe, “But a devil who must love you very much.”
“If that is love, then let me live in hate.” He heard the rustling of the vast canopy of willow leaves above them and drooping all around them, the arched boughs bending lower than their shoulders, and for a moment it felt like a refuge, a place to hide from the world, as children would. They stood in the canopy’s shadow, but the sun winked through the leaves, sprinkling them with warmth. Everything in him longed to be away from here, with her, and her alone.
“Adam,” she said suddenly, hopefully, “in law, coercion to marry is grounds for annulment.”
“But I cannot protest. Not as long as this queen reigns.” He shook his head. “No, there is no way out.”
They stood still together, lost in the misery of it. The church bell tolled. To Adam it sounded like a death knell.
He heard a quiet cough, and noticed two burly men standing at the corner of the inn, their backs to him and Elizabeth, their eyes on the road. They wore her livery, though their swords and vigilant stances were proof enough that they were guarding her. “Where is the rest of your guard?”
“Waiting at the edge of town. I had to see you. Alone.”
They guarded a royal princess, he thought, the stark reality so clear. “I used to have a fantasy that I could marry you,” he said. “The day we traveled through the snow together, as friends, and that night found each other, as lovers. I was so drunk on loving you I made myself believe I could have you and keep you. But it was a lovesick fool’s dream. Never possible.”
“Then I am a fool as well, for I had the same dream.”
It fired him with such desire it was pain. “You love me,” he said, gripping her arms.
Tears glistened in her eyes. Her chin trembled. “Love you, yes. For the arrow you stopped with your body. For the worlds you showed me—the one we traveled through, and the one inside of me.”
This was harder to bear than her fury. “I cannot have you. You are a princess of the blood. And one day you will take the place of your sister.”
“I may not,” she said, sounding desperately hopeful. “Anything can happen.”
“She has no heir of her body and is past bearing one, even if her husband ever returned. Her throne must pass to you.”
“Others may claim it. My cousin Mary of Scotland, backed by France. Or Philip himself, backed by the might of Spain.”
He said nothing. Princess or queen, she had always been too far above him, and they both knew it.
“I wish I
were
queen,” she wailed. “I would have the power to stop your wedding. I would forbid it. I would make you free.”
It was tearing him apart. To have her love, but know he could never have
her.
“But I am not queen,” she said with a hollow voice that matched the hollowness in his heart. “And the one who is would send Mistress Thornleigh to the stake.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “And so, you must marry. And I must wait for a crown.”
It was hard to stay silent. He could not tell her that the crown might soon be hers, that half of England stood ready to fight for her. That he would fight to the death.
He bent and picked up the whistle from the grass. He lowered the necklace over her head and let it settle on her breast. He slid his fingers into her hair at her temples. “Like flame, I always think. And you, bright as the sun.” He smiled, the saddest smile he had ever felt. “I flew too close to the sun. I had to fall.”