Owen glanced over his shoulder at Pen. “Stay here until I come back for you.”
“How long?” she whispered, her mouth dry at the prospect of kneeling alone with her helpless baby, unprotected in the shadowed darkness of this dank-smelling chapel, waiting for she knew not what. She held the child tightly to her breast, pressing his mouth against her bosom in case he began to cry.
“Not long.” And he was gone, closing the narrow grilled door behind him.
The three women had stopped in the dark passage. With a murmur of excuse he slipped past them, leading the way over the uneven flagstones, down a staircase into the crypt that smelled of damp and old bones. A single candle illuminated the space.
Owen wasted no time on words. He crossed the crypt and led the way up another narrow staircase. A door at the top opened onto an alley running between the walls of the cathedral and a great mansion next door.
Three men sat horses with pillion saddles. Owen helped the princess onto the pillion pad behind a burly man well wrapped in a homespun cloak, a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his brow. He offered no greeting and received none.
“You will stop to change horses twice on the road, madam,” Owen said softly. “Be prepared to ride fast. These men know the route to take and how to evade pursuit, so you may trust them absolutely. I doubt you will run into any difficulties, you have enough of a head start. God go with you.”
“And with you, Chevalier,” Mary murmured. “You may thank your masters for their help. I will not forget it.”
Owen bowed and turned to help Susan and Matilda onto their own pillion pads.
As they rode off, Cedric slid out of the shadow of the house wall. “Shall I fetch our horses now, sir?”
“When the clock strikes the half hour. Have you packed the panniers as I instructed?”
Cedric looked hurt. “Aye, sir. Of course, sir. I haven’t forgotten one thing. Even all the breechclouts?” There was a question in his voice, although he didn’t directly ask why such things were necessary on this upcoming journey. He received no answer to the unspoken question however.
“Good. Then be here when the clock strikes the half hour.” Owen turned back to the secluded door into St. Paul’s, and Cedric hurried off, reflecting that he had not seen his master smile once since they’d returned from the journey to High Wycombe.
Pen started as the tapestry over the door rustled. Philip lifted his head from her breast. Owen entered the Lady Chapel and went immediately to the grilled gateway that opened onto the nave. There was a scattering of worshipers in the body of the church, but none of the crowd that had accompanied the princess had ventured into the holy place. The priest’s voice intoned still from the altar.
He came to kneel beside Pen at the rail before the chapel altar. “We will leave in five minutes.”
“I must go directly to Holborn,” she whispered back. “Northumberland will know of my involvement in Mary’s escape. He’s bound to—”
“No, you will come with me,” Owen interrupted, in the same murmur. Despite his outward calm, his blood was racing, every nerve stretched at the gamble he was about to take. He was committing himself absolutely to one course of action. If it failed he had lost everything.
“But where?” She turned to look at him, lifting the heavy veil with her free hand. Her gaze searched his in the dim light of the single candle that burned on the altar.
“I wish you to come with me without seeking any answers,” he replied.
Pen pushed her hand up beneath her veil, rubbing the back of her neck.
“I wish you to come with me without seeking any answers, and without hesitation,” he repeated.
This was a test.
She knew it immediately. A test, and possibly the second chance she had longed for.
But her spirit rebelled even as she understood that he was asking her now for her complete trust, her complete faith. But she was an independent, free-thinking woman. Not some cipher willing to yield all free will.
She stared back at him, and then saw behind the dark eyes the plea, the desperate anxiety, the hope he would not express. He had staked everything on this one demand. She had to go with him on these terms or not at all. But go
where
? To
what
?
“My child . . . what of Philip?” was all she said.
“He will come with us.”
“My parents?”
“You will send them an explanation through Cedric.”
“I have no explanation,” she pointed out.
“You are with me. That will be sufficient.”
There was silence in the Lady Chapel. As if from far away she could hear the congregation making the ritual responses. He had asked for no hesitation, and yet he was not pressing her. She understood that he was frightened that she would refuse him.
And she too was frightened that she would refuse him.
She rose fluidly to her feet, hitching Philip more comfortably onto her hip. “Do we go this way?” She gestured to the tapestry.
Owen nodded and lifted the tapestry aside for her. He didn’t know whether she had agreed or not. His heart still raced; he was aware that his palms were damp inside his gloves.
Pen entered the narrow corridor. They moved swiftly and in silence across the crypt, out into the cold morning. The clock struck the half hour as Owen closed the door behind him. Cedric was riding down the alley, leading two horses.
He dismounted hastily, took off his bonnet, and bowed to Pen, his eyes darting to the baby in her arms. It seemed he had an explanation for the peculiar contents of the panniers.
Owen didn’t know whether she had agreed or not, but now he took the initiative, hoping that he could carry her indecision on the tide of his own affirmation.
He instructed crisply, “Cedric, you will go at once to the Earl of Kendal’s residence in Holborn. You will ask to speak only to the earl or to Lady Kendal. You will explain that Lady Pen and her son are under my protection. They need have no concerns for her safety, and I will return her, with her son, in due course.”
“No,” Pen said. Such a message would infuriate her parents, but it would also perplex and distress them. The thought of the pain and confusion they must be feeling now, now that Pippa had arrived with Charles and told of their grandson’s rescue, filled her with sorrow. She should go to them now, at once.
And yet she could not. Not if she was to follow her heart.
They would understand. In the end they would understand.
She glanced at Owen and saw his mouth twisted with pain and disappointment. He had taken her sharp negative as a final rejection.
She said urgently, “Cedric, you must say that the chevalier and I have some further business to transact concerning my son. Tell them that I would give anything to be with them now, but I will come as soon as I can. Tell them that I am content with what I am doing now.”
She touched Cedric’s arm. “That is most important, Cedric, you understand. Tell them that I am content, say that they are not to worry.”
Cedric looked surprised at the urgency of her tone, the pressure of her hand on his arm, but he said only, “Yes, madam. I understand.”
Pen wondered what Robin would tell them of the chevalier. Would he tell them what he saw as the truth? Or would he have the sense to keep his tongue still and let Pen tell her own story in her own way?
“Where shall I meet up with you, sir?” Cedric asked.
Owen didn’t immediately hear him. Her words brought him joy, but also a greater understanding of the difficulty of her decision. It was not just about him at all. A humbling reflection, but Pen had prompted many of those in their time together.
He thought how he could barely remember his own family life, the strong ties that bound parents and child. His father had been a distant figure, his mother loving, but at an early age he had been sent away from her to live in another aristocratic household as courtly tradition dictated. As for his own wife and children . . .
He became aware that Cedric was repeating his question and collected his thoughts with some effort. “I make this journey alone, Cedric. You will report to the ambassador. You will tell him that I follow the beacon. He will understand. Then you will offer your services in whatever way he can use them. . . . Pen, give me Philip while Cedric helps you mount.”
Pen handed Philip over, watching covertly as Owen, with seemingly natural ease, shifted the child to his hip, waiting until a disgruntled Cedric had helped her into the saddle of a broad-chested chestnut mare.
He handed the child up to her without a word, then mounted himself on the big black that Pen remembered from their previous journey.
Cedric trotted off down the alley, heading towards Ludgate and Holborn. Owen set off in the opposite direction, towards Watling Street.
Pen had to ride behind him until they reached the wider thoroughfare, then when she came up beside him he said in neutral tones, “We have close to a hundred and fifty miles to ride. I would do it if we can in five days. We will ride late into the evening and start at dawn each day. Can you manage the child without the help of a nursemaid?”
“Yes, of course. But I have nothing for him.”
“In the panniers.”
She looked down at the panniers that hung on either side of the saddle. She hadn’t noticed them before. Her sense of being detached from reality intensified. There was something dreamlike about going she knew not where for a reason she had not been given. What had he meant by following the beacon? Some code, presumably, that the ambassador would understand.
She had given herself up to Owen d’Arcy, to whatever purpose he had. And yet, despite that, she could feel no closeness between them. It was as if they didn’t know each other at all, and had to start all over again. And perhaps they did.
It was a daunting prospect, and yet it held the promise of a satisfaction and contentment she had not known in so long. And if she wondered how it could be possible, practical, to love a spy, to live in domestic harmony with a man like Owen d’Arcy, she pushed it to the farthest recess of her mind.
They left London through Bishopsgate, and only when she was beyond the walls did she begin to feel safe. The immediate danger was past. Northumberland would not know where or how to follow them.
“Gone?” Northumberland stared in heavy-eyed disbelief at the Earl of Pembroke, who, although dressed, looked almost as rumpled in the duke’s bedchamber in Durham House as he had in the courtyard at Baynard’s Castle, rather as if he’d dressed in the dark.
“Aye,” Pembroke responded. “She went to early mass at St. Paul’s. She was seen to enter with Lady Susan and Lady Matilda. The carriage remained outside, but when I arrived, the service was over and there was no sign of the princess or her ladies.”
“And what of Lady Pen?” Northumberland demanded. “She accompanied the princess to London yesterday. We spoke with her last even. What does she know of this?”
“She was not seen with the princess, but she too has disappeared,” Pembroke said, chewing his lip unhappily.
Northumberland let loose a string of vile oaths at his valet, who was helping him dress. The man endured in stoic silence lest blows accompany the oaths.
“Who’s behind this? Who got them away?” Northumberland demanded of the air. “Lady Pen certainly has a hand in it.”
“And perhaps the Chevalier d’Arcy?” Pembroke suggested. “We know there’s a connection there.”
Northumberland picked up a cup of wine and drained it. “Aye, the French,” he said bitterly. “But is Beaucaire involved in this too? The entire Kendal clan?”
He slammed the empty cup back on the table. “Kendal is no true friend of ours. He has never made any secret of his loyalty to Mary. I see his hand here also.”
He snatched his cloak from his valet’s hands with something resembling a growl. “We return to Greenwich, Pembroke.”
He strode from the chamber, saying over his shoulder, “The king must sign his
Device
today, and the council ratify it immediately. Mary is out of our hands for the moment, but all is not lost.”
“And what of Lady Pen?”
“When I have the king’s signed
Device
in my hand, I can arrest Mary. Then I’ll deal with the rest,” the duke stated with a grim smile. “For the moment, we cannot afford to show any discomfiture in the princess’s removal to Essex. We must allay suspicion, not give it credence.”
They took horse and crossed the river on the Horseferry, the duke in fulminating silence, staring out over the oily water as his mind selected and rejected the options that lay open to him.
They reached Greenwich before noon, and Northumberland, with a brusquely dismissive wave at his anxious companion, strode into the king’s bedchamber. The stench knocked him back like a physical blow. Since his last visit he had gone no farther into the chamber than the doorway.
He approached the bed. The king lay on piled pillows, his body a mass of ulcerated sores, his breath barely stirring the air.
“ ’Tis done, Northumberland. My
Device for the Succession
is complete.” Somehow a wasted arm managed to gesture to the side table, where lay a sheet of parchment, closely written in the king’s exquisite handwriting.
Northumberland marveled as he took up the paper at how this boy, at death’s door, had managed to produce a work of such perfection. It was all there, not a legal point to be disputed, and the king’s signature and seal were duly affixed.
“This is good, Highness,” Northumberland murmured. “But now you must rest.” He looked down at the poor heap of wasted flesh with a surge of desperation. The boy could not die until the council had approved the new deed of succession.
But, dear God, how long could he last?
Twenty-five
Guinevere looked at the page as he finished his rehearsed speech and said, “I don’t understand. Where is she going?”
Cedric clutched his cap to his chest. “I don’t know, madam. My lord wouldn’t tell me. I was just to say that Lady Pen says she is content.”
Hugh laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “The boy knows no more than what Pen told him to say, Guinevere.”
She placed her hand over his. “I know. But it’s so hard to understand, Hugh! I need her to be here, Pen and her child . . . our grandson. I
need
her . . . to talk to her, hold her . . . tell her how sorry I am.” Her words caught and she clasped her throat with her free hand as if she could smooth out the obstruction.
“We all do,” Hugh said quietly. He nodded dismissal at Cedric. “My thanks, lad.”
Cedric bowed and hurried away with relief. The atmosphere in the house had felt uncomfortably like mourning.
Guinevere still stood immobile at her husband’s side. “Perhaps Robin will know something,” she said.
“Robin knows no more than I do,” Pippa declared. “And perhaps less. He’s not a woman.”
“What do you mean?” Her mother looked across at her where she stood by the table, her fingers twisting, her pose unusually taut and tense for the mercurial, sunny-tempered Pippa.
“Pen is in love with Owen d’Arcy,” Pippa said. “
Passionately
in love.” Her hazel eyes glittered as she emphasized the word. “She was in love with him before he helped her find Philip, but now she owes him everything. ’Tis quite simple, really.” She shrugged her bony shoulders.
“She’s in love with a French agent,” Hugh said. “Does she know that?”
“Oh, yes,” Pippa said. “I believe she’s always known it. I don’t know what she’s going to do about it, but I expect that’s what she’s trying to find out now.”
Her parents absorbed this. It was an explanation that fitted Pen’s steadily determined character. She was not one to give up, as her extraordinary battle to retrieve her son had proved. She would do whatever was necessary to come to a decision, to do what she considered right.
“I think she’s probably in the safest possible hands,” Hugh observed, pressing Guinevere’s shoulder. “From what I can gather, the chevalier has a formidable reputation.” His voice took on a somewhat dry note. “Multitalented it would seem, as a swordsman, strategist, spy, diplomat. Utterly competent at pretty well anything you could mention.”
“Including seduction,” Guinevere observed tartly.
“Pen didn’t go into anything with her eyes closed.”
Slowly Guinevere nodded. “There’s nothing we can do for now, anyway, except help that poor little mite she’s called Charles.” She shuddered slightly. “What a terrible, terrible story, Hugh. How could we . . . ?”
“We did, and we had only Pen’s best interests at heart,” Hugh responded. “We made a mistake. We will do everything we can to make up for it.”
“Yes.” Guinevere seemed to stand straighter, to draw strength from her husband’s firm declaration. Hugh never repined over the past; with a soldier’s blunt purpose and clear sight, he would always move ahead, rectifying where he could, accepting where he couldn’t.
She continued decisively, “And in Pen’s absence, the first order of business is the Bryanstons. I will have that woman’s head, and her son’s.”
“Well, Pen and Robin have already started on that,” Pippa said, and told them of Pen’s plan. “We think the duke will take the bait.”
Hugh gave a grim smile. “What a splendidly devious plot. I wouldn’t have thought Pen had such a mind.”
“She’s been keeping company with a spy,” Guinevere reminded him.
Hugh gave a short laugh. “I think you had better grow accustomed to it, love. Our task now is to rid the world of Miles Bryanston and thus clear the way to establish Philip in his stead. I care not what tools come to hand.”
“No,” Guinevere agreed. “I will go to the nursery now and see how Ellen is managing with the little one. By the time Pen returns, I intend that he should be plump and talkative.” She moved away from her husband, and left the parlor, her step as graceful as ever.
Hugh nodded to himself. Such work would help Guinevere to assuage her guilt. And he thought it was all to the good that Pen should have Philip to herself for a while. They had a bond to forge that should have been forged more than two years earlier.
The setting sun that night told Pen that they were journeying westward. They entered ever-deeper countryside, riding down narrow lanes, along bridle paths, through woodland.
The weather had turned beautiful, brilliant blue winter skies, a chilly sunshine. It wasn’t warm enough to soften the hard-packed mud of the paths and lanes and the horses made easy work of the travel. Although they rode a long day, Owen didn’t press the pace, and stopped several times to bait and water the horses.
Country inns were few and far between. They stopped that first night at a roadside tavern that could offer them only a stable loft for accommodation. Pen regarded the flea-ridden straw mattresses and said bluntly that she would prefer to sleep on the earthen floor.
Owen didn’t argue. He left her in the sorry chamber, reappearing some minutes later with his arms piled high with dried bracken.
“Prickly but no fleas,” he said succinctly.
Pen was amazed at his competence as he created a nest of bracken before the fire that he himself had lit in the stone hearth. He had brought in the panniers from the horses and now he laid out blankets over the bracken and set a flagon of wine on the floor.
“I’ll see about supper and water.”
Pen laid Philip on the makeshift bed to change his breechclout. He was sucking his thumb, gazing up at the ceiling, his eyes following the flickering shadows of the fire on the beams. She tickled his belly and he gave a little chortle, drawing up his knees.
She bent to kiss him and he thrust his fists into her face with another chortle. “Do you know I’m your mama?” she whispered. “I think you do.”
She turned at the sound of Owen’s booted feet on the ladder that served as stairs. She offered him a rather self-conscious smile as if he had caught her doing something foolish.
“I was talking to him,” she said. “I keep wishing he would say just one word, but at least he’s started to chuckle.”
“He has a great deal to catch up,” Owen said, setting down a wooden bucket and a kettle. “There’s hot water in the kettle. Not much, but you might be able to refresh yourself and the child.”
“I’ll save some for you.”
He shook his head. “Don’t bother. I’m perfectly content with cold. I’ll fetch supper now.”
“And milk,” Pen called after him.
She opened another of the panniers that Owen had assembled for Philip. There were flannel cloths as well as the linen breechclouts, two small blankets, two new petticoats and Holland smocks. She wondered how he had managed to acquire these things. When had he decided that they should make this journey?
She dampened one of the flannel cloths and washed Philip quickly lest he get too cold. His thinness as always distressed her. He wailed at the washing, but once he was clean and dried he smiled at her again, looking expectantly towards the pannier from which throughout the day had emerged bread, cheese, winter apples.
“You shall have some milk,” Pen said, setting him on his feet, watching as he toddled around, examining his surroundings. Maybe he was not articulate yet, but he was certainly lively and interested, she thought, as she dampened the cloth and washed her face, the back of her neck, and her hands.
Owen returned with a jug of milk, a loaf of bread, and a cauldron of what looked like stew. “The sleeping quarters aren’t up to much, but the food seems passable,” he observed, setting down his burdens. He rummaged in the pannier and produced two spoons and knives.
Pen marveled anew. He had forgotten nothing, it seemed.
When they had finished she left him with Philip while she went in search of the outhouse. The night was filled with stars, the ground bathed in silver light. It was very quiet after the noise and bustle of Greenwich and the city. She was so tired, she felt she could fall asleep on her feet, and the thought of the bracken bed filled her with longing.
She had the sense that Owen would not approach her tonight. In fact, she thought that he would make no attempt to make love until what lay between them was resolved in the way he wanted, or had decided. It was strange, like living in limbo, being in such close, intimate contact, yet conscious of a vast distance between them that was also somehow contrived.
They lay that night beneath their cloaks, the blanket-wrapped baby nestled in the crook of Pen’s arm, the bracken sweet-smelling beneath them. While Owen said nothing, indeed lay motionless, his breathing deep and even, Pen was aware of every muscle and line of his body. She ached with fatigue, but also with a pure physical longing for his touch. But sleep claimed her, and when she awoke in the gray dawn she was alone on the bracken.
Her heart banged against her ribs. Philip was gone. She was alone. She scrambled to her feet, her loosened hair tumbling around her face, her eyes wild with fear. She ran for the ladder, then heard Owen’s voice from the stables below.
He was talking in a soft monologue, and when she stumbled down the ladder, almost landing on her knees in her haste, she saw him holding Philip, encouraging the child to pat the neck of one of the horses in a stall.
Tentatively Philip put out a hand, touched the horse, then withdrew it with another of his chortles.
Owen became aware of Pen and turned to her. The wildness had not yet died from her eyes and he understood what she had feared. It would be a long time before she would be truly secure, truly certain that she would not lose the child again.
“We were just looking at the horses,” he said calmly, handing Philip back to her. “If you will pack up the panniers, I will see about breakfast and provisions for the day. Then we must be on the road.”
Pen cradled Philip’s head to her breast, drawing deep breaths as she calmed herself.
Owen went past her, back to the cottage. It was so hard to hold himself away from her. When he’d seen her terror-stricken face he had had to restrain himself from going to her, taking her in his arms, soothing her, kissing that soft mouth, kissing the fear from the forest pools of her eyes.
If she turned from him when she knew the truth, then there was nothing more he could do, but he had sworn that if there was to be another time when they touched each other in the ways of love, it would be a beginning, not an end.
The strange sense of living in limbo persisted for the remainder of the journey. Each night they lay all three of them in one bed, sleeping chastely, considerately moving as little as possible on the various rustling mattresses they were offered.
While they rode, Pen pointed things out to Philip as he sat on the saddle before her, cradled in the crook of her arm. Trees, birds, rivers, a scarecrow. She repeated the names of these objects. His solemn stare would follow her pointing finger while he chewed on a slice of apple or a crust of bread. She wondered if he had ever seen a tree, or a bird, immured as he had been in the vile darkness of a Southwark stew.
When her arm grew tired Owen would lean over and take the child from her. He never asked her if she was tired, but he seemed always to know the exact moment when she was ready to relinquish her son.
Pen relaxed into the strange, quiet, waiting rhythm of those days as they continued to travel westward. On the fifth day they took the Horseferry across the Severn River into Wales. Now she knew definitely what she had suspected for the last two days. But she said nothing, and neither did Owen.
Philip had been fascinated by the ferry and the river, and for the first time threw a fit of pure temper when Pen would not let him race around the flat deck between the horses, or stick his head through the rough wooden railing.
“He’s cross,” Pen said in astonishment. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Owen laughed, and for an instant she glimpsed once again the warm, teasing companion and lover who held her heart.
But the laughter died as swiftly as it had arisen, and his expression grew once more closed, his eyes unreadable. When they rode off the ferry Pen could feel his tension, felt how it grew as they rode through what seemed a much softer air, across a verdant countryside that stretched along the banks of the wide Severn. Ahead of them in the clear air they could just make out the dark crags of the Brecon Beacons. Now Pen understood the meaning of his strange message to the ambassador.
“That is the beacon?” she said, pointing to the mountains.
“ ’Tis a code we set up many years ago. I have never had cause to use it before,” he replied. “If I’m needed, if there’s danger, the ambassador—and only the ambassador—will know where to find me.”
Pen accepted this in silence. It reminded her anew of the unpredictable, perilous life he led for the sake of his country. She thought of Robin and wondered with a touch of fear what had happened to him as a result of Mary’s escape. Had he been implicated? Proved a traitor to Northumberland’s cause?
They turned through fieldstone gateposts set into a soft gray fieldstone wall and rode up a grassy track, fields on either side. The track curved, and ahead lay a small manor house of the same soft gray stone, with a slate roof and mullioned windows. Smoke curled from four chimneys, chickens scratched in the small court in front of the house, there were ducks on a pond to one side, and doves cooing from a dovecote.
Pen glanced at Owen. He had stopped his horse and just sat there gazing at this bucolic scene. He inhaled deeply.
When he spoke, his voice was shocking in the taut silence. “I thought never to see this again.”
Pen didn’t ask why not. She knew she would find the answer here.
The front door opened and a woman stepped out. She was tall, thin, gray-haired beneath a simple white coif, elegant, despite a worn countenance and the apron she wore over a kersey gown. Two green-eyed children peered around her skirts.
The woman raised a hand to her eyes as if to shield them from the light. She took another step forward.