It would require the king’s cooperation, but Northumberland’s power over the king in his frailty was absolute. And it meant that Princess Mary and her half sister, Elizabeth, were in grave danger. And anyone close to them.
Robin got stiffly to his feet and stretched, cramped and cold. He went to the window and looked out at the gray dawn. Northumberland would have reasoned that if the French were distracted with the promise of a marriage between Mary and their own candidate, the Duc d’Orleans, they wouldn’t look too closely at what else the Privy Council was up to.
Once the duke had what he wanted, the French could complain and threaten retribution as much as they liked. Once Jane was crowned queen, the two princesses safely locked away, not all the French and Spanish armies combined could dethrone her. But until then, he had to work in secret.
Pen by her very proximity to Mary was in danger, whether she refused to do the duke’s bidding or not.
She would have to return to Greenwich this morning. If he could catch her in time, he could get her back into a barge and away to Holborn before she set foot in the palace. But first he must discover where she had disappeared to.
A short while later, Robin ran from the chamber, swinging his cloak around him as he went. A few servants gave him indifferent glances as he ran past them. He skipped over the mop of a burly man washing the marble floor of the great hall and took a side door out onto the redbrick path leading to the river; the same path one of the servants had seen Pen traverse last night. Men were extinguishing the pitch torches that lit the path but seemed incurious about this early-morning courtier’s hasty progress.
It had stopped raining but the yews still dripped in melancholy fashion and the path was slippery beneath Robin’s feet. The river was an oily ribbon.
At this dead hour, when the night traffic was done and the day’s work had not begun, the quay was for once deserted. There were a few craft bobbing far out in the water, dim shapes in the waning dark as they waited for the first morning customers.
At the dock was the French ambassador’s barge. Robin stopped at the end of the path, for the moment hidden from the barge while keeping it in clear view.
Pen stepped out onto the dock. She held something in her arms. Owen d’Arcy came behind her. He too held a bundle in his arms.
Robin moved out from concealment. “Pen?”
Twenty
Pen looked in dismayed astonishment as her stepbrother hurried across the quay towards her. What on earth was he doing here in the gray dawn? She glanced uncertainly over her shoulder at Owen, who was carrying the little red-headed boy. Owen’s eyes had narrowed; his mouth was taut.
The child in her arms, as if sensing her distress, woke up and began to cry, bewildered little sobs as if he was catching his breath.
Owen stared at Robin of Beaucaire, a cold anger building with the realization that here was the source of the poison. He had expected some kind of trouble from Pen’s brother, but he had expected it earlier. And he hadn’t expected the venomous form it had taken.
And Pen had swallowed the whole dreadful story without question. She had had not an ounce of faith in him.
Pen felt Owen’s cold gaze piercing her like a shaft of ice. She hesitated, comforting the child in her arms, unsure what to say or do as Robin approached across the quay.
Then quite suddenly the first wave of jubilation hit her.
She was holding her child.
And it was so right that Robin should be the first of her family to acknowledge her son. She and Robin were closer than any siblings could be, and Pen wanted him now to touch the child, to smile upon him, to anoint him with the full blessing and acknowledgment of all their family. Then it would be real. Then she would know that the long nightmare was over.
She began to run to meet him. “Robin . . . Robin . . . I have my son. I’ve found my child.” She arrived breathless in front of him, hugging the little boy to her.
“See . . . See . . . Philip’s son. See his eyes. They’re Philip’s eyes.” She didn’t know when she’d decided absolutely that the child’s brown eyes were his father’s, but now it seemed self-evident.
Robin stared at her in bewilderment, then he looked blankly at the filthy scrap of humanity in her arms.
“Pen . . . Pen . . . dearest Pen.” He reached for her, wanting to hold her. “What is this, Pen? What are you talking about? What is this child?”
Pen stepped away from his arms, the light dying from her eyes. “I told you. This is my son. I have found my son. Don’t you believe me, Robin?”
For a moment Robin could find no words. He could think only that Pen had slipped off the edge of reason, and there was only one person who could have led her to make such a desperate error.
He spun around on Owen d’Arcy. Almost without his being aware of it his sword was in his hand.
“Don’t you understand what you’ve done to my sister?” Robin declared, his sword arm unmoving, his brilliant blue eyes ablaze with a wild fire. “How could you let this happen? Why would you encourage her in this insanity?”
“Robin!”
Pen cried out as she saw the streak of silver.
“Don’t be a fool,” Owen said coldly. He put down the child he was carrying. The boy instantly curled against Pen’s skirts, hugging her knees.
“Robin, I know it’s hard for you to believe,” Pen said urgently. “But this is
my
child. Owen helped me find him.”
Robin turned to her, although his sword still remained pointed at Owen. “Pen, how could you trust this man after what I told you . . . after what you know of him?
Why
would he help you? A man who disowned, abandoned his own children, a man—”
He broke off abruptly at a jarring pain in his arm. A savage blow to the blade of his sword had bent his wrist and sent the weapon spinning to the ground. Owen d’Arcy stood still, his black eyes mere pinpricks, his rapier steady in his hand, its point now resting lightly on the ground.
Robin clasped his wrist, numbed from the force of the blow that had disarmed him.
“Dear God in heaven!” Pen whispered. She could feel both children shaking against her as the ugly violence thickened the air around them. “Stop this! Stop it!”
Owen sheathed his rapier and took a deliberate step away from them. Then with a mock bow at Pen, and another towards Robin, he turned back to the barge.
“No . . . no, Owen!” Pen cried, stumbling after him, her step impeded by the child still clinging to her skirts. Had he forgotten that she still needed his help? Her quest was but half over.
Owen stopped, one foot already on the deck of the barge. He turned slowly back to her, and a flicker of hope showed in his eyes.
Pen didn’t see it. “Owen . . . Owen, we have to help Mary escape. You have to help me . . . for my son’s sake.” She came to a stop just in front of him, one arm encircling the child at her knee, the other holding her son to her hip.
Hope faded. He said nothing.
Robin, still holding his numbed wrist, came out of his trance. He looked again at the child in Pen’s arms.
Could they all have been wrong?
Horror filled him.
A stranger had believed Pen when her family had deserted her. But why were there two children? Such pathetic, ill-used babes. How could the child of Pen and Philip be in such a condition?
Dear God, what had they all done?
He took a step towards Pen, desperate to find the right words amid the questions flooding his brain, but she ignored him. She had eyes now only for Owen.
“Owen . . . please?” Pen said. Nothing else mattered. At this moment she had no interest in anything but gaining Owen’s cooperation. No one else could do what needed to be done. She had her child. Now she needed that child to be safe.
She continued with a flat single-minded determination, “This has nothing to do with whatever lies between
us
. I cannot understand that if you won’t explain . . . and now there’s no time.”
She paused for a heartbeat, waiting for something, some softening of his expression, but there was none. No offer to explain later, no hint of emotion in his hard gaze. Nothing at all.
Once again she closed her mind to anything but her present goal. “I’m not asking you to do this just for me, Owen. Mary’s freedom will suit both sides of our bargain, I believe.”
Robin found his tongue at last. “What bargain?” he demanded, his eyes still on the child in Pen’s arms.
Pen turned to him. “The chevalier and I struck a bargain. I would spy on Mary for him, and in exchange he would help me find my son.”
Her jaw set as she saw Robin’s appalled expression. “I doubt you have the right to throw the first stone,” she said.
“You are wasting my time,” Owen stated, turning impatiently back to the barge. “I am not interested in your family squabbles.”
“No, wait!” Pen demanded, desperation edging her voice as she realized how frail now was the tie between herself and Owen. “This is not a squabble. Defeating Northumberland is in all our interests.”
Robin’s head was spinning. He seemed to be caught in a vortex that threw him from one drama to the next. He said urgently, “God’s blood, Pen! That’s why I was waiting for you. I need to talk to you alone. About Northumberland.” He laid a hand upon her arm, shaking it slightly. The child she held whimpered, and Robin dropped his hand instantly.
“Pen . . . please. We need to talk.”
“If this concerns Northumberland, it would probably save time if I were a party to the secret,” Owen observed. He glanced at the sky. It had stopped raining and the clouds seemed to be lifting.
Robin exhaled sharply. He shook his head as if in denial, then said, “Pen?”
She faced Owen. “Owen, will you help me, regardless of how things are between us? Will you do this one last thing for me?”
“And just how are things between us, Pen?” he asked with an ironic, mocking light in his eye.
It tore at her heart. She said quietly, “Broken, I believe.”
Owen merely nodded. He looked again at the gloomy sky, the lines of his face harsh and sharply etched in the gray light, but when he turned his eyes once more upon his companions, Pen recognized the return of the spy’s detached concentration as he considered the issue.
“Let us get onto the barge. The quay grows public now and we’ll be remarked.”
Robin bent to pick up his sword, and thrust it back into its sheath with a rough gesture. He and Pen followed the chevalier onto the barge, Pen still hampered by the child she held against her skirts and the other in her arms. But she found she could not let go of either of them. And it seemed, by their limpet-like clutches, that they were not prepared to let go of her either.
“So, what is so urgent that you had to catch Pen in the dawn?” Owen asked without preamble, perching as before on the edge of the table, legs stretched in front of him, ankles casually crossed. His posture suggested a certain insouciance but there was nothing careless in the penetrating black gaze.
“Northumberland is demanding that she pass false information to . . .” Robin hesitated, seemed to swallow before he could continue. “To you . . . to her lover. If she refuses, he threatens to charge her with treason. She has to leave here, go at once to safety.”
Robin glanced at Pen, at the children. What were they to do with them?
How could he think clearly at the moment?
“The slimy, crawly bastard!” Pen exclaimed. “I am not frightened of Northumberland.”
“Then you should be,” Owen said, his mouth grim. “What is this information?” He gave a short laugh. “You may as well tell me since I’m supposed to hear it.”
Robin accepted that somehow he was now hip deep in French diplomacy. He could have no loyalty to a man who had threatened Pen, a man whose ambition showed every sign of threatening the security of the kingdom. He had no choice now but to offer his services to a man who had involved Pen in the serpentine undercurrents of conflicting diplomacies.
It was a hideous tangle, and yet Robin could see but one logical course of action. And, if the truth be known, he was so much at sea, so confused and distressed, he could almost welcome the detached professionalism of the seasoned French agent.
He told Owen d’Arcy what Northumberland wished the French to believe.
Owen’s mirthless laugh came again. “The man must think we’re fools. It’s a stalling tactic, but why?”
“I think I know,” Robin said, and quietly explained his suspicions.
“If Jane is crowned queen, Northumberland’s son will become king and his father will be the real sovereign power in England,” Robin finished. “But he’ll need the consent of the Privy Council even if the king has changed the document of succession, and he needs to keep his plans totally secret until the moment he reveals them as a
fait accompli
. So if the French are busy planning Mary’s wedding to one of their own, and the Spanish are fretting about the possibility of a French alliance, Northumberland can get on with things in peace.”
Owen nodded and observed aridly, “A shrewd piece of deduction. My congratulations, Beaucaire.”
Robin looked as if he would rather have such a compliment from anyone but Owen d’Arcy.
“Mary is in even greater danger then,” Pen declared. She was sitting on the bench, the children lying beside her, their heads on her lap. She was impatient with all this talk, all these plans, that postponed the moment when she could be alone with the boys, the moment when she could begin to know her son and he to know his mother.
“The duke will need her well out of the way,” she said, her gaze bent upon the two heads in her lap.
“And he’ll need Elizabeth out of the way too,” Robin said. “But, Pen, you’re also threatened, as is anyone close to Mary, and particularly since you’re not going to spy for Northumberland. You cannot go back to the palace now.”
Owen had put all emotion from him, in the way he had perfected over the years. His mind was detached, focused only on the task at hand. He said crisply, “She has no choice. If we’re to secure the princess’s freedom, Pen must behave exactly as normal. Indeed, for the moment, Beaucaire, you must tell the duke that your sister has agreed to do his bidding. That should buy enough time.”
He turned to Pen. “If asked, you will tell Northumberland that you will do anything to serve your country, and, of course, anything to serve the duke. Is that understood?”
Pen nodded. “And what of Mary?”
“We have to do this in two stages.” He tapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other as he explained. “There are only two ways out of Greenwich, by road or by river. She’ll be apprehended on either route before she gets more than a mile. We have to get her out of Greenwich and back to Baynard’s Castle. From there, there are any number of routes out of the city. It will be a simple matter to confuse the pursuit and get her to safety.”
“A simple matter?” Pen queried. “The Earl of Pembroke owns Baynard’s Castle. He’s part of whatever scheme Northumberland is hatching.”
“There is a way,” he said, his tone curtly dismissive of this cavil. “And I believe that if she seeks Pembroke’s protection he will not immediately know how to refuse it.”
“I think that’s true,” Robin said. “I have observed how he often stands in opposition to Northumberland . . . not for long, I grant you, but he does mutter sometimes.”
“Yes, so I have been told,” Owen said carelessly.
Pen assumed that he had his own spies with their own ears and eyes. Others like herself . . . doing what she had done.
“Northumberland will suspect nothing if the princess wishes to take an airing on the river,” Owen continued. “After her illness it would not be surprising, and he’ll know that she cannot possibly escape his vigilance on the water. This afternoon you and a few of her ladies will accompany her. Obviously she can take nothing with her, nothing that will imply she’s expecting to be gone more than an hour or so. She will land at Baynard’s Castle and take up residence again there.”
“But what then?” Robin asked.
“I’ll arrange for her departure at first light tomorrow. Pen, you may look for me at Baynard’s Castle this evening, when I will tell you what to do. In the meantime, Beaucaire, you will distract Northumberland so that he doesn’t think too much about the princess’s decision to take an airing. Tell him about your sister’s willingness to do his bidding. Suggest other ways she can be useful . . . I’m sure you’ll come up with something inventive.” Owen made a dismissive gesture that set Robin’s teeth on edge, but he made no comment.