The fugitives sword, p.25
The Fugitive's Sword, page 25
part #1 of Lord's Learning Series
“For all their faults these English seem to be efficient,” the captain said, speaking now to the master. “We have already secured the supplies we need to do our repairs. If they keep with what we have been promised, we should be seaworthy by the end of tomorrow, and well able to sail within three days. Weather permitting, and given a fair wind, we’ll be home within the week.”
Home. A pulse of sadness caught his breath. Home for these men was not home for him. They would not go anywhere near Breda. For the first time since he had been caught up on the Star he found himself wondering about the future. And wondering if he might be happier staying here in Whitby. He could speak English, he was of their faith, and he could work hard. Surely that would be better than going through another storm and maybe losing his life? The more he thought about it, the better the idea seemed to be.
And of course, if he stayed there would be Beth. He could see her every day. Maybe he could even get work here in the inn as a server. Maybe she might help him, she might ask her father if—
“Jorrit?” the Schiavono must have spoken his name once already as he said it with a sharpness to it. “Are you falling asleep?”
Blinking a little, Jorrit nodded as he realised that both the captain and the master had left the room.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
The Schiavono shook his head.
“No matter. You are awake now. The captain said we should bring up some water for him and the master ready for them to wash with in the morning.”
“Water to wash with?” Jorrit wondered when the two men became so fastidious. At sea they seldom bothered washing or shaving or any such.
The Schiavono gave him a despairing look.
“I know it is not something you know much about, but yes, to wash with. Come on. You have been the servant all evening, you must know where we would get such.”
Jorrit nodded and got to his feet.
He saw Beth as soon as they went into the common room, she was carrying some plates and smiled as he approached her. Then her gaze moved from Jorrit, and her eyes widened and two points of bright colour suddenly appeared, one on each cheek. Then the smile returned, more brilliant than ever before.
But it was not a smile for Jorrit.
Her gaze was fixed on the Schiavono beside him.
Two brutal claws clamped about Jorrit’s heart and squeezed so tightly he wanted to cry out. He turned to see the Schiavono returning her smile and in it was something more. The same something he had often seen in the faces of the men in taverns when their gazes followed the serving maids as they walked from the table. Deep inside something gave way and if Jorrit could have struck down the Schiavono in that moment, he would have done so.
“Can I help you?” Beth was asking, her luminous cornflower blue eyes unwavering in their focus. As if she had completely forgotten Jorrit even existed.
After that, everything was blurred. Jorrit was lost, crushed under a weight of misery and a cold knot of anger deep inside pressed against it. In a numbed state he took the water back to the master’s room, avoiding the Schiavono’s eye and not replying when he said goodnight. The master had already retired to bed so Jorrit set the bowl near the hearth where the embers would warm it a little overnight and fell onto the truckle to lie for hours, unable to sleep, his mind full of Beth and the look she had given the Schiavono—and the one he had fixed on her.
Chapter Sixteen
The following morning Kate woke late. For a few minutes she lay in her comfortable bed in Harington House and let herself absorb the peace brought by the sounds around her, from bird song to the shouts of the draymen at the brewers yard nearby. All so wonderfully normal.
When she got up, she saw it was close to noon and realised that she would now surely not need to attend the masque. She had the perfect excuse. The lump on her head had gone down a little and the headache had mercifully receded. But attending the masque would not just mean sitting through the performance and revels, it meant risking being chosen to dance as a partner of one of the masquers, fending off the probing questions about her misadventure and needing to be perpetually on her guard against attacks from the Villiers and their allies.
She summoned Deborah, and got dressed and arranged to face the world, going downstairs just in time to join Lucy for dinner in the room that overlooked the gardens, now standing bleak and bare in thin winter sunshine that was too weak to lift the frost from the grass.
Kate knew to expect an interrogation, delayed from the previous night. When she had arrived back after midnight in the company of di Zorzi, Lucy had taken only the most essential details of the events that had transpired before insisting Kate go to bed. But instead, having solicitously enquired after Kate’s health and suggested that she should see a physician, Lucy pulled a wry face and sighed.
“The king has cancelled the masque,” she said and made it sound as if she were announcing the end of the world.
Kate perked up.
“Cancelled the masque?”
“Ben told me when he came earlier. The king is suffering from ill health again, poor man.”
“So, there is to be no masque? I am so sorry, Lucy, I know how much you were looking forward to it.”
“Yes, I was. But I can wait a couple more days.”
“A couple more days?”
“Yes.” Lucy examined the food on offer with a critical eye before selecting a dish. “Really, Kate, are you sure you shouldn’t see a physician? You seem to be repeating everything I say.”
“Only because you’re not making yourself clear. If the masque is cancelled what difference does a couple of days make?”
“Because it has been cancelled for today but will now take place on Sunday evening instead.”
Kate’s heart sank. Three days. She wondered if she could maintain her indisposition for that long. Perhaps seeing Lucy’s physician was a good idea after all, he would be bound to order her to keep to her bed for a week.
“Anyway, we need to think of a reason why you vanished yesterday. It really would not be a good idea for the truth to get out. I think perhaps you tripped and banged your head.”
Kate blinked.
“I was abducted from the banqueting house at the heart of Whitehall and somehow taken to a house in Hanging Sword Alley. Where, soon after, the man who seized me was murdered. I could have been murdered.”
“Yes. I know.” Lucy stopped eating and sat back. She held Kate’s gaze with her one good eye. “But you were not. Now. Please listen. You need to consider the consequences of the truth getting—”
The anger from all that had happened to her formed a tense ball in Kate’s chest.
“Don’t you understand, if it were not for Signor di Zorzi—?”
“Such a charming man,” Lucy said, cutting across her. “I’m very grateful to him and I’m sure he will appreciate the need for absolute discretion in this matter.”
Kate blinked again, her brows tight in a frown.
“I don’t see why you feel there is a need for any such discretion.” Then Kate remembered what she had wanted to do today. “Where is the book? I want to read it and find out why it nearly cost me my life just to be seen holding a false copy of it.”
Lucy shook her head.
“That will not be possible. I gave it to Ben when he came this morning, and he was going to return it to its owner straight away. By now it will be back where it belongs and good riddance.”
Kate tried hard not to let her anger show. After all, the return of the book had been the whole purpose of her stratagem in the first place. But she was somehow sure that the answer to the mystery of her abduction would lie in those pages and had badly wanted the chance to find out.
Lucy was still talking. “Please just let me explain. I told Ben about his man being involved in your accident—”
That was too much for Kate. She shot to her feet and put her hands on the table, her face inches away from Lucy’s.
“Accident? I was very nearly killed.”
“Sit down and listen to me.”
The sudden sharp tone made Kate straighten up and she sat obediently.
Lucy drew a deep breath and released it.
“I was not about to tell Ben the truth or the whole court would know before supper. Now I know how you must be feeling, but you need to think carefully about this. If you let the truth be known, firstly, all will come out about the book, and then everything we did, everything you have just suffered, will have been in vain.” She held up a hand as Kate opened her mouth to protest. “No. Listen. The other thing you need to think carefully about is that if the truth becomes known then there will need to be some kind of investigation and that could take a long time. Time in which you could be required to stay in England.”
Kate closed her mouth and slumped back in her chair. Lucy was right. It would be very difficult to press her case to leave the country if such an investigation was put in train. She felt suddenly sick.
“Then whoever was responsible will get away with it,” she said, dully.
Lucy reached over the table and squeezed her hand. “The man who seized you certainly did not. Ben tells me he was someone who had not been in his service long. Indeed, only since the masque was proposed. It seems he was supposed to be helping to take some of the unused materials back into the store to make more space. The wagon those items were being transported in would have been more accessible from the side door as that was where things had been taken out to fill it.”
“So, I was removed from Whitehall concealed behind unwanted clouds and mermaids’ tails?”
“There. That’s better,” Lucy said, smiling. “You are regaining your sense of humour.”
Kate decided not to point out that sarcasm and amusement were not at all the same.
“Ben also said the man had been recently in the service of the Countess of Buckingham and boasted of having worked for her son, the duke, before that.”
Kate stared.
“So, you think it was George Villiers who was the one behind this?”
“Possibly,” Lucy said, “but if he was Buckingham’s man then—”
“—why was he killed for doing what he had been told to do?” Kate finished the question for her.
Lucy nodded.
“Good. You are thinking again. I believe that bump on your head has been muddling you more than you might realise.”
“And it is another reason not to make the matter public,” Kate said regretfully. “If so much as a whiff of suspicion was sent in the duke’s direction he would strike fast to silence it.”
“Of course, though he would likely find good reason to show that the man left his service on bad terms should anything seem to be likely to touch him.”
Kate sighed.
“So, we do nothing and tell the world I tripped and hit my head?”
“It is simple enough. You will write me a note saying you are going home from the banqueting house. I will claim a servant gave it to me. However, being so preoccupied with the preparations for the masque, I didn’t read it right away. Then, having forgotten all about the note, I discovered your absence and panicked. There are advantages to being thought of as a scatterbrained woman.”
“But I was not here, and they will know that.”
“You were not here because you had changed your mind and gone instead to visit Severina di Zorzi, who is well known for her close ties to the Venetian ambassador. You stayed to supper there and then her son brought you home.”
“After midnight?”
Lucy spread her hands.
“It was clearly a meeting of minds.”
So, that was how the tale was told. The accident which had given her a lump on the head came from falling downstairs and was nothing more sinister. Even the need to ask di Zorzi and his mother for their assistance in the deception was simple to arrange. Barely had they finished dinner than Venturo di Zorzi arrived unannounced at Harington House.
“I apologise for my presumption,” he said as one of Lucy’s servants closed the door on the library where Kate had repaired to see if she could find any books by John Dee. “I was sent by my mother as she was most concerned for you. She wanted you to have this.” He held out a small apothecary’s bottle. “She says it is excellent for those who have a headache whatever the cause.”
Before Kate could reply, Lucy joined them, and Kate noticed that she flushed with delight as di Zorzi greeted her with his gracious elegance.
“I also came with news,” di Zorzi went on. “I made some enquiries and found that the man who had been living in that house was known by various names. I could provide you with them, but I suspect none would be real. He was known to my informants to be a man not to cross and to be willing to do anything—and I do mean anything at all—for the right price. I believe, Lady Catherine, you had a most fortunate escape from his clutches.”
“Do you know who had been employing him most recently?” Lucy asked.
Di Zorzi shook his head.
“To my profound regret, I do not. You need to understand Whitefriars is a place where the law of the land seems held in abeyance and criminals—debtors and even murderers—claim sanctuary.”
The matter-of-fact way he spoke of what was after all a district of London, occupying land between Fleet Street and the Thames, just without the walls of the city proper, shocked Kate to her core. But Lucy just nodded, her expression grim. It was clearly not news to her that such a lawless place existed. Kate had always known that there were areas about London called ‘liberties’ which did not come under the restrictions which governed the city itself. Places like Southwark which was also outside the walls and on the other side of the river and was renowned for being home to all kinds of entertainment from theatre and animal baiting to its whore houses. But to discover that there was one such that openly offered safe harbour to criminals, so close to both the city and Whitehall, was inconceivable.
“So, the people who live there are all criminals?”
“Not at all. But many are and they terrorise the rest. Whoever employed the man who held you, either my informants did not know, or they were too afraid to say. The kind of fear one might only overcome with an extreme of torture.” He lifted his shoulders a little. “That could be arranged if you would like.”
“But from what you just said these could be innocent people who have seen nothing at all or just happened to see someone talking to the man who seized me.” Kate protested, feeling suddenly sick.
Di Zorzi looked thoughtful.
“That is true. But I am not sure that true innocence is a state known there. It is certainly not one most seem to understand. They may not be criminals in the eyes of the law, but they live with little regard to such standards.”
Kate shook her head. Lucy had already made her realise that any public pursuit of what had happened was going to be impossible. Even though di Zorzi held out the offer of a private one, the thought that by giving her consent she might condemn those who had nothing to do with her abduction to suffer ‘an extreme of torture’ had chilled her anger.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said quickly, “but I thank you for your offer. You see, this incident is something that I really must not allow to become known.” And she went into what she and Lucy hoped he would be willing to attest to, should the matter arise. “Although in all truth, I doubt it will be something you are likely to be asked.”
Di Zorzi was smiling even before she had finished.
“My mother took a liking to you, Lady Catherine, which is why she sent you her favoured restorative. I am sure she would be delighted to confirm that you visited her yesterday, should anyone enquire; and my own discretion on your behalf, I hope you already know, is always assured.”
Kate sought desperately for a way to thank him without demeaning his honour. She took off a small brooch she was wearing and pressed it into his hand.
“For your mother, to thank her for the restorative.”
With that he took his leave, but Kate had one final question for him, something that had been puzzling her.
“Why did you choose to open your school in such a place? Surely your students are not of the kind who live there?”
“None of my pupils come from those alleys,” he agreed. “But there is one thing it is hard to teach and that is what it means to draw a sword in real need. By having my students walk along Hanging Sword Alley, it is almost inevitable they will be required at some point to defend themselves.”
“And to kill?” Kate asked.
“Sometimes that too,” di Zorzi agreed, his tone mild. Then he left with gracious words, an elegant bow and a charming smile.
Of course, in the end, Kate had no choice but to attend the masque.
She had hoped at the least to be able to sit well back from the stage area, ideally on one of the lower temporary galleries where she could avoid the risk of being chosen as a dance partner by any in the revels. Her heart sank when she and Lucy were led to sit in one of the better seats. Lucy was delighted and sat nodding and waving to all her friends and foes who had not been able to secure seats in the same area.
It was the first time Kate had seen the king since their private meeting at Theobalds and he looked a little better now than he had then, fortified by his exquisite clothing and the men about him—his son, of course, and the Duke of Buckingham. When he arrived and everyone rose to make the appropriate bows as he walked to take his seat, Kate in her exposed position found herself briefly under his scrutiny. He stared at her with a look of puzzlement as if surprised to discover she was there.
That was strange, as she had sent to ask him for permission to leave. Before that, at Theobalds, he had promised it too. He had to know he had not granted her such as yet. Only when she glanced at the man beside him, the Duke of Buckingham with his gaze ready to catch hers and the ghost of a smirk on his face, Kate finally understood, and she had to clench her fists tightly to keep her anger in check.
