Linda Barlow (53 page)

On a hot, sunny day in the middle of July 1557, Alan Trevor sat in the stern of a rowboat in the port of the city of Antwerp, northern Europe's busiest commercial center. He was staring at his brother's ship, the Argo, which lay at anchor in the harbor. She was leaving in a day or two for the Middle Sea, one of her seamen had reported, after several weeks' stay here in port, taking on cargo. Thank God she was still here. Alan had been afraid he would not arrive in time.

Was there a woman on board? Alan had nervously inquired of one of the Argo's seamen, whom he had met on the docks. Aye, a' course there was. The master's flame-haired lady. Soft on the eyes, she was, too, and a cheerful soul, with a smile for everybody she met. "She's not a proud, haughty one, for all that she's a highborn lady," the sailor reported. "She wanders about the ship questioning us about our duties as if she truly has an interest in our work."

"Then she's free? She's not with Trevor as a captive?" Alan had asked.

"Such she seemed when first he brought her aboard. He was looking murderous then, and we were all afeared for her, the sweet young lassie. Bound her wrists, he did, and locked her in his cabin," the seaman recounted with obvious relish. "But after a night in bed with the lady, everything changed." The sailor gave Alan a broad wink. "He's a tamed tiger now, the master is. At her side all the time, laughing with her, caressing her, gazing soulfully into her eyes. No, young sir. If anybody's the captive now, 'tis Cap'n Trevor. Is aught amiss?" the seaman added, apparently noting the sick look on Alan's face. "Who're you, anyway, the lady's brother?"

"God have mercy," Alan had muttered, and turned away to hide his emotion. She was alive, at least. Apart from that, all Alan's worst fears had come to pass. They were lovers. He should be happy, he told himself, that his wayward older brother was not physically mistreating the woman whose reputation he had so thoroughly ruined. But what future would there be for Alix, intimately involved with a man now infamously known in England as a murderer, a rapist, and a traitor? And how was he going to free her from his clutches?

He had a lever to use, thank God, but it was a lever he took no joy in. If it failed, as it well might, the price would be intolerable.

In London Alexandra's father had come to him, finding him locked in the dreary darkness of a prison cell, three days after the dreadful events in Geoffrey de Montreau's cellar. Alan had been tossing on the rough measure of straw that served as a bed, dreaming that somebody was torturing Alexandra. Her body was stretched out and bound by her wrists and her ankles, her screams were shattering his eardrums. Only he could save her; only he could stop the brutal turning of the wheel. His confession would be a betrayal, but if he did not confess, the woman he had loved since childhood would have her bones pulled from their joints, leaving her broken and crippled.

Groaning, Alan had twisted as violently as if his own body were being tortured. Then he seemed to hear a loud clanging sound, the sound of cruel metal—chains, implements of pain. Bolting upright, he clutched his throat, eyes open and heart pounding. The same dream. Hour after hour, since the morning when the queen's soldiers had freed him from his captivity in Geoffrey de Montreau's residence, only to throw him into an even darker jail, Alan had dreamt the same dream.

He heard the clanging again and realized it was coming from the door to his cell. A torch flashed in the darkness and the iron door was pulled open. Sir Charles Douglas stood there on the threshold. Alan recognized him immediately by the vibrant red of his beard and hair.

"Alan Trevor?" Douglas' voice gruffly challenged. He held the torch high. "I can scarcely see you, lad. It's taken me all night to track you down. Those blasted idiots who took you thought you were a French spy."

"No, sir, I'm not."

"No, just an English heretic and traitor," Douglas said. Strangely enough, there was no condemnation in his tone, only a heavy sadness. "Come with me. I want to talk to you, but I've no mind to do it in this hole."

Alan rose unsteadily to his feet and followed Douglas out into a dark corridor, up a flight of stairs, and into a sparsely furnished room. He was weak from fear and lack of nourishment. He had eaten nothing for three days. "Alexandra, sir? Is she safe?"

Sir Charles spat a vicious curse. "Your brother's got her on his ship."

"So they escaped?"

"If you can call it escape when a man has rape and murder foremost in his mind. He and his paltry band of heretics were ambushed at the riverside. Quite a few of them were killed. De Montreau, that snake, had Alexandra there, and Roger dragged her off at knife-point, as mad with grief and rage as I've ever seen a man. That wretched Frenchman had him convinced that she had most vilely betrayed him."

"Sweet Jesu. But it was I who—"

"Never mind; I've heard the tale," Douglas interrupted. "It all gets blacker and blacker, like a bloody Greek tragedy." He sighed heavily. "Catherine's son. For her sake, I've left the blackguard alone, even though 'twas no secret to me he was up to some devilry. But I should have clapped him in prison long ago."

Alan swallowed hard as the implications sank in. Alexandra abducted by Roger and a prisoner on his ship. Roger believing her guilty of betraying him when it had been he, Alan, who had given their plans away. Hadn't she enlightened him, explained the true situation? He groaned. Knowing Alix, he realized she probably had not. "Surely he will not harm her."

Sir Charles Douglas just looked at him.

"He will not kill her," Alan said, more to reassure himself than Douglas. "Not even he would go so far."

"He's gone far enough. Her abduction is common knowledge. De Montreau has made sure of that. One of the queen's ladies taken by a daring criminal. The tale is all over London already."

"Mayhap it will blow over and he will wed her."

"Not likely. I know his type. He ruins women, he doesn't marry them. Don't you know the reason for de Montreau's hatred? Roger seduced his virgin sister, got his bastard upon her, then beat her till she miscarried and died."

"That can't be true." But even as he spoke, Alan remembered Geoffrey's accusation in the torture chamber. It had been the first he had ever heard of the unfortunate Celestine. "Roger wouldn't do such a thing."

"Ha! If you'd seen him the other night on the riverbank, pressing his blade against my daughter's throat until her blood welled up, you'd sing a different tune, lad." His voice broke in anguish as he added, "In truth, I don't know whether she's alive or dead."

Sick at heart, Alan stared at the red-haired man. Usually Douglas was a robust, vibrant man, possessed of the same energy for life that his daughter had, but tonight he looked old and drained of vitality. "What can we do?"

Douglas' expression hardened. "We'll not sit by and do nothing, that is certain." His eyes gleamed ruthlessly. "He's pushed my face in it, and now I'm going to return the favor. I don't like to do it, but by God, he's gone too far this time." His blue gaze shifted and burned into Alan. "That's why I need you, lad. You know where they were headed with their cargo of heretics, do you not? I'll be sending you after them. You're the only person who can save her. If it's not already too late."

But it was too late, Alan knew now, as his boat approached the Argo and banged up against the sleek ship's side. Not to save her life; that, thank God, wasn't necessary.

But his brother and his dearest friend had come together at last, just as he had been dreading they would. For Alan’s own heart and soul and peace of mind, it was too late indeed.

* * *

Alexandra was up on the quarterdeck enjoying the sun and the sea breeze and supervising the first outing on the part of her patient, Francis Lacklin. After several weeks of bed rest, his chest wound had made good progress toward healing. His muscles were very stiff, though, and his right arm and shoulder, in particular, had lost some mobility. The fresh air, she'd decided, would do him good.

"Are you tired?" she asked as they took a turn around the small high deck. She put one arm around his waist. "Lean some of your weight on me."

Lacklin gave her an indulgent smile. "It's not necessary that you support me, Alexandra. I'm thirty-six years old, not seventy."

"If you wish to reach seventy, you'll do as I say."

"How Roger puts up with your nagging, I can't imagine."

Alexandra laughed. "I only nag people who are too weak to defend themselves. I'm not a fool, you know."

"I know that very well," he said more seriously.

Alexandra ignored the flicker of unease his words created in her. Amazingly, she and Francis had begun to lay down the foundation for a friendship of sorts. Since she expected to spend the next several months in close quarters with him, she was determined not to do—or think—anything to jeopardize this fragile sense of trust.

During his slow convalescence Alexandra had spent several hours a day sitting beside his bed, trying to repress the suspicions that had been aroused by his strange remark about Pris Martin. She begrudged him neither her service nor her time. There were only so many hours a day she could spend lolling about in bed with Roger; and when they had reached the busy port of Antwerp, her lover had become preoccupied with other matters. The heretics had had to be smuggled ashore. Once they were safely sent on their way to the German states, where Calvinism was well established, Roger had turned his attention to his commercial ventures. He had a good deal of business ashore. "Because of the thriving cloth trade, Antwerp has become the Venice of the north," Roger explained to her. "England may be a commercial power to reckon with one day, but at present we're no rivals for the Dutch."

Because the Netherlands were controlled by Spain and thus allied to Mary of England, Roger categorically refused to take Alexandra ashore. "'Tis too much of a risk," he told her. So she had no choice but to spend her spare hours with Francis Lacklin, who was also languishing with boredom.

He no longer preached to her as he had done last summer at Whitcombe. He prayed sometimes and read the Holy Scriptures, but he was easily distracted; often he would frown over a passage, then toss it aside, his face pale, his eyes troubled. Sometimes Alexandra would look up from her own book—Roger's cabin was a veritable library of wonderful volumes—to find Francis staring speculatively at her, and she would feel a little chill as she wondered if he knew what she suspected.

At other moments, when Francis made an unexpected jest, or when she saw him arguing philosophy or playing chess with Roger, Alexandra found herself wondering if the incriminating words he had uttered had not merely been the wanderings of a fevered brain. Fantasies, no more. She knew of no reason why Francis should have murdered Will. It made no sense at all.

She had not spoken of her latest suspicions to Roger. Like the boy who cried wolf, Alexandra knew she would not be believed if she made another accusation in this matter, at least not unless she had amassed a mountain of proof.

Besides, on that night at on the Thames riverbank, Francis Lacklin had freely made the greatest sacrifice of all by offering up his own life to save Roger's. On top of that, how could she accuse him? It would bring nothing but pain to all of them if she did.

She and Francis were making one more turn around the quarterdeck when a young sailor shouted up to her that there was a young man asking to speak with her. After she helped Francis sit down, she leaned over the wooden balustrade, searching the main deck for someone whom she assumed to be a messenger from Roger, who had gone ashore early that morning. She saw a tall, slender man dressed in the English style. He looked in her direction, shading his eyes in a gesture she recognized. And then she was running, practically sliding down the steep ladder that led to the main deck. "Alan!" She flung herself into her old friend's arms. "I’ve been so worried about you. Thank God you're alive!"

Despite his heavy heart, Alan was cheered by the joyful intensity of her greeting. He hugged her hard. "I was afraid you might not be. Flung as you were into the lion's den."

"In sooth, I've tamed the lion," she said lightly. "Now, what news, what news? You look gaunt and tired. Come inside; I'll have wine sent up. Are you hungry? Oh, Alan, it gladdens my heart to see you!"

A few minutes later they were sitting in what was obviously the master's cabin and just as obviously Alexandra's primary abode. There were two gowns—both looked new—hanging on a hook upon one wall, a silver comb and brush on a small shelf beside the neatly made bunk, and a book of Greek poetry open on the massive desk that, together with the bunk, took up most of the space in the small room. Roger's things were there also: his maps and charts, the sea chests where he kept his clothes, a pair of leather boots, a clean linen shirt flung over the end of the bed.

There was a somewhat scruffy-looking cat curled up in the center of the bunk, regarding him through half-open eyes. It apparently found him uninteresting, and returned to its nap. Alan tried not to think about what his brother and Alix must be doing together in that bed. She seemed unembarrassed by her fall from virtue. She was clad in a simple summer gown made of some silky blue material; her hair was braided and coiled atop her head to keep her neck cool in the sultry heat. Her face was well-scrubbed and free of the fine cosmetics he had grown accustomed to seeing her wear lately; if anything, she looked younger than she had appeared at the court of Mary of England, less worldly, more innocent.