The Spymaster's Daughter (36 page)

“G
ood Lord, Frances, a lady cannot do such work,” Robert said, his head lolling back on the cushion she had placed behind him, though his mouth turned up in grim humor. “Women are midwives, not surgeons.” He knew his words would never discourage her, but he wanted what she did to be done in defiance of custom, in disobedience of him. That was always Frances at her best.

“Hush!” she said, her tone impatient to cover her fright and uncertainty. “The wound must be probed. You said so yourself.” She was tired and hungry, troubled to her heart that she would fail in this, the most important task of her young life. Aye, even more important than becoming an intelligencer. Was her hand steady? Was her courage sufficient? She shivered, silently praying
that God bless her hand so that she would not kill him, though hurt him she must.

Through the window she heard the near, sweet
coo-coo
of a woods dove calling for a mate. Robert's gaze moved to the window and he smiled. He had heard the same call, and that shared moment steadied her.

Taking a deep breath, Frances realized that she could not show her fears—not to Robert, not to herself—for once shown, once acknowledged, they would have power.

“Think you that I would allow you to die, brewer?” Her tone was light but firm, steadying her hand, convincing even to herself.

“Would my death not solve…solve a problem?”

She looked into his eyes so that he would see that she knew exactly what problem he meant. “No, never solved for me.” She had not intended to respond with the whole truth, but she no longer followed her best intent. What came from her heart was more real than what she had been taught, or even what she had vowed.

He spoke the next words quickly. “Frances, wait…wait until the barber-surgeon is sober. This is no work for a lady of the presence chamber.”

She would not allow him to spare her at the cost of his life. “The surgeon I saw may never be sober.” She drew a sharp breath and held it. “Robert, you know that once the wound begins to suppurate, it will defy the best Oxford doctors.” She frowned, her face a handbreadth from his. “And what work is not for me? Have you forgotten so soon that I fought the footpads of the road?” She swallowed hard. “Mayhap killed one!” She filled her lungs again to steady her trembling hands. “It is my fault you are wounded. If I had not defiantly stowed myself on the dray—”

“Those men would have left me for dead in the dust. You saved my life with your courage…my dearest Frances…and I will owe
my next years to you, all my years.” For a moment his eyes shone most bright through the pain. “Yet I would not have you do this bloody thing.”

“Phelippes must answer the Scots queen's message, Robert, and set the plan in motion. We cannot fail in our prime duty as intelligencers.”

“Aye,” he said, his mouth relaxing, “you have the right of it. Hire a horse and go on without me.”

“How could I explain bringing a message from the Scots queen?”

He sighed, his chest heaving, his mouth abruptly tight from the hurt of his wound. He lifted a dark brow. “I see you are seldom wrong, a troubling skill in a woman.”

Impulsively, she bent to Robert and kissed his beardy cheek, scratching her lips most pleasantly. “Not for you, dearest.” She pulled back and whispered, “Hush, now.”

“I find your particular potions very healing, Doctor,” he said, a smile emerging from the grimace of pain as he shifted his shoulder more upright.

“If you are an obliging patient, you may have another dose later.”

“I would bear the tortures of Hades for one more…or two,” he said, his gaze never leaving her face. “And next time, dearest doctor, I will help, if that suit.”

He knew that even in death he would bless her. He would see her lovely face glowing before him as the dark o'erwhelmed him. Many times he had faced deadly danger and thought it unworthy of his life. Not this time. If he must die, he would die content, having given his love and received hers. He was certain at last that she loved him and meant him to know it.

Frances cut away the shirt from his shoulder and put the leathern wine bottle to his mouth. He drank deeply, and she poured the rest on the wound. She shuddered slightly, knowing how the wine
must sting him, and how much more she would hurt him with the probe. “Are you ready?”

He nodded, teeth clenched.

Propping Ambroise Paré's book against the other bolster, she extracted the probe from its sealskin nest, then, with a blurred etching on the well-thumbed page to guide her, bent to the task she could not avoid if Robert was to live. Her hand trembled violently, and she prayed earnestly for God to steady her. How soon her abandoned faith returned when she was troubled. She smiled slightly at the thought that she was faithless to faithlessness, and found the strength to steady the probe.

With his good arm, Robert reached for her hand and looked into her gray eyes, shining with tears. “We will do this thing together, Frances, as we have done so many things….” In a softer voice, he added, “As I would do all things.”

She half smiled her gratitude, wondering at his open emotion. Did he think to die? “You will live…and live long, Robert,” she said urgently. With his hand on hers, she guided the probe to the raw, red wound in his shoulder.

His hand tightened slightly on hers. “Frances”—he breathed her name like a soft spring breeze against her cheek—“whatever comes, you must know that you have all my heart for what you do and who you are…before, after, and forever.”

She met his gaze. “I think I loved you from that first day,” she murmured, “but it was so impossible.”

“It is yet impossible, sweet Frances.” He took a deep breath. “Though such an obstacle does not stop love…ever.” He nodded slightly. “Begin, dearest surgeon.”

Her hand moved the probe, steady now with his hand as blessing. It disappeared inside the wound.

His hand did not tighten, though his breath caught and quivered in his chest. “Push it through, Frances.”

The second, deeper probing caught on something, and,
holding herself steady, she pulled it out and laid the small piece of once white, now bloody cloth on the flap of the sealskin surgery kit.

Robert's hand had gone limp and fallen away as the probe went deep. From all the time spent in her father's sickroom with his doctors, she remembered one important thing: If you worked with a knife or probe, work fast. Though tears like stones caught in her throat, she was gladdened to see him now insensible to pain.

Paré's guide open in front of her, she searched in the surgeon's kit for the golden vial of unguent, part yellow wax, olive oil, and turpentine, for closing the wound. Thanks be, Paré's unguent had resolved the need to burn a wound to cauterize and close it. With the greatest care, she applied the salve. It was more difficult to treat the exit wound on his back, but she pulled him forward just enough, despite his groans, and succeeded. Reading again the instruction for bandaging, she looked for linen bandages soaked in colophony and, after cutting the roll into squares, applied them. There was not enough bandage roll remaining to pass around his broad chest and body.

Drawing in a sharp breath, Robert opened his eyes, trying to focus them on her face. He swallowed hard.

With some triumph she held up the bloody piece of shirting.

“Well-done. You have talents…to amaze.”

She pushed the bed curtains aside and stood, and with only a slight hesitation she stripped off her shirt and tore the sleeves into long pieces.

He looked at her, naked to the waist, his eyes wide and alert.

“Aye, my breasts are small. I know it well,” she said, braving the truth to take the sting away before he spoke his mind. Philip had not liked her breasts and had avoided looking at them.

“They are perfect,” he said, shifting forward with less pain to receive the wrap she had made from her sleeves that would hold the two colophony bandages in place close against his wounds. And as she tightened the strips of her shirt about his chest, he kissed one
breast. “I love this one well.” And then his lips reached for the other. “I love this one even better.”

“Hold yourself still,” she said, after shivering slightly, fighting distraction by sudden pleasure. Breathing deep, her breasts lifting, she knew she would never think of herself again as being a woman whose body could not please a man.

“Blessings on you, Robert.”

His dark mustache twitched with his smile. “I have just been twice blessed by your bosom, Frances.”

She looked deep into his black eyes, hoping to see truth there. Could any woman once betrayed have full faith in a man's words?

And yet she did. It was a small miracle. She had thought—nay, determined—never to love again, thought her heart closed to such girlish emotion, yet here it was, love full and strong as if quite the first love she had ever felt.

“You are delirious, fevered,” she said, making an excuse once again to delay complete belief, not yet ready to accept that which had so long been denied. Would she always love best the love she could not have? Was that her imperfection? Heaven's great continuing jest!

He saw her uncertainty. “You must know that you have owned my heart for some time, Frances, and I have hoped for yours.”

“Yea,” she said, though yet fearful of showing her whole heart. “It is the fever talking; otherwise you would know that one day I must leave you behind, keeping only this memory.”

“Do you think, sweet Frances, that I do not know there is no hope for this to end well…as I would wish it…with you as my wife, the mother of our children?”

She kissed him lightly on the lips. The kiss was tentative at first, but she gathered courage from desire and her mouth found his once again, with more certainty. He held her with his good arm close and then closer, until she began to heat. “We cannot, Robert…. We cannot. Your wound.”

“God's grace, Frances, can any man lie abed with your beauty and be unmanned?”

“I doubt such matters concern God.”

“If He made me in His image…?”

The question hung between them, forcing a smile from her as the sun, moving across the sky, came full into the room. His sweet wit would follow her forever.

Yet she needs must force her attention back to the work at hand. She surveyed the bandaged wounds. “Not the best, but not the worst for a first-time barber-surgeon apprentice. Praise God, the unguent did its work. No fresh bleeding shows through.”

But he had some pain. She could see it in the set of his mouth and the tight muscle in his cheek. She held the laudanum to his lips and whispered, “Take a sip or two, Robert. No more.”

He did as she asked. “Let me sleep now and I will be a'right…. Sleep quickly mends.”

Quietly, Frances backed off the bed, though the lumpy straw pricked her knees through the hosen she wore. As she stood, she felt the chamber spin and knew she must eat. It was late morn and the smell of pottage from the outer kitchen wafted in the window with the breeze. Retrieving her doublet from under the surgeon's kit, she dressed to go down the stairs to the inn's main room, hoping no patron noticed that her sleeves did not appear above her hands.

Will, the stable boy, crouched in the hall outside the door. “Why are you here?” she asked. “For another penny?”

“Nay, I would help ye, lass.”

Was her disguise so easily breached? “What say you?”

He shrugged and stepped closer, his voice low. “I be seein' the boy players in the inn yard in their lady gowns, but I ne'er saw the turnaround. Though a stable boy, I be no dullard.” He drew himself up with some dignity. “I will not tell my master yer secret, if ye take me from this place into a better…. Please, I beg you.”

She decided to answer the harsh way. Begging would put her
in his power. “You threaten me at your peril, boy. 'Tis a hanging offense to deal so with your betters.”

“It be a church offense to dress as a man if ye have no prick!”

She pulled him inside and shut the door. “Hush, boy!” She spoke no more threats, as the boy was near to tearful despair.

“I beg pardon, mistress, but I must away from this place. My master has me for”—he hung his head, searching for words—“for unnatural acts each night in the stables…which will send me into hellfire. Either hanging on earth for sodomy or burning later in hell!” His hand went to his heart. “Ye must help me! I be seein' yer kindness to him,” he said, a thumb jerking toward the bed, “and ye give me hope.”

It was clear the boy was desperate, but so was she. “How can I help you?” She made a gesture toward the bed. “I must give him all my strength.”