Perfect Shadows (43 page)

When she caught up with them Robin was proclaiming the plot
against his life, exhorting the citizenry to follow him, to protect the Queen,
and to save his life. A few people gathered, but stood on shifting feet, giving
each other sidelong glances before drifting away, or waving and smiling as if
the desperate gamble were just another Sunday outing for the gentry. In vain
Robin tried to rally them, crying that the Crown had been sold to the Spaniard,
but only a few sturdy beggars and other riffraff collected, with an eye to
spoils. When Hal stepped up to him, speaking quietly and gesturing to the
dwindling crowd, he threw up his hands in defeat and turned away.

Libby slipped away from the others there in Fenchurch Street,
making her way home, as Essex sat in the Sheriff ’s house and called for meat.
She dismounted not far from the house and slapped the horse’s rump, letting it
go where it would. There was a great crowd gathered about Essex house, not
faraway, and she wondered apathetically how Hal and Robin planned to get back.
Wearily she made her way to her chamber, ignoring the horrified squeaks of her
maids, stripped off her clothing and fell into the soft bed utterly exhausted.

Essex sat unmoving, his hands pressed against his aching
forehead. It had been a long and wearying day, and this waiting was the worst
part of it. They had arrived back at the house by boat, fighting their way
through the mob in the garden, only to find that Ferdinando Gorges had freed
their hostages in an effort to mitigate his part in the fiasco, and so robbed
them of their last desperate hope.

“Anyone with so Spanish a name should never have been trusted in
the first place,” Almsbury snarled, although he knew well that the man, a
kinsman to Ralegh, was as English as any there. “We should leave for France,
now, tonight!” he added, mopping his dripping brow with shaking hands.

“Better Ireland,” Southampton laughed at him, “although I do not
allow for a minute that we would get as far as Windsor, even supposing we
escaped the grounds. You fool! The time for running was while we were still
free, not now. If I’m to finish earthed up like a badger anyway, I’d as lief it
be without any further such strenuous pastime. They’ll have sport enough with
us ere this night’s out, without our providing more. If you’ve nothing sensible
to say, Roger, do go to bed, or at least hold your tongue.” Roger’s fair skin
had flushed furiously and he stepped towards Southampton with his hand on the
hilt of his sword, but Hal had merely laughed at him again. “If you truly
desire another fight you have only to wait, as the Queen’s guard will be along
presently to fetch us all to the Tower,” he told the younger man, who made no
answer, but turned his back on the company. Blount had been taken at the
Ludgate, charging the guards withdrawn sword when they had found their way
blocked. They had been fired upon and Robin had come close to being hit. His
page, Henry Tracy, had died at his feet.

Mericke kept up a steady droning litany of blame, his own name
conspicuous in its absence, until Robin screamed at them to take themselves
away. He burnt every scrap of his correspondence.

As they awaited developments in the long evening, Hal lounged in
a chair by the fireplace, cracking nuts and throwing the shells into the blaze.
“Will you stop that infernal noise?” Robin snapped, and Hal stared at him for a
second before shrugging and tossing the handful of nuts, meats and all, into
the fire. “I do not understand how you can eat anything, anyway,” Essex added
petulantly, rubbing the heel of his hand across his disordered hair. His
doublet was unfastened, his ruff hung limply askew.

“I plan to eat as long as I have a mouth to put meat into, and
as long as my gullet is still attached to my belly,” Hal retorted. He looked as
fresh as he had that morning, save for a few mud stains on his boots and hose,
and a large splotch of dried blood on his collar, from the nose of a man who
had laid hands on him during their scramble from the water stairs at the bottom
of the garden to the house. There was a feverish light in his eyes, and
something about his contained stillness was more terrible than frenzy. Robin
recalled with a start just where he had seen such restraint before, the night
when he had held his naked blade to Prince Kryštof ’s throat. Even though he
had drawn blood the man had stood just as perfectly still and as seemingly
unconcerned. He realized, belatedly, what exactly Hal had said.

“She will have us killed,” he whispered, as what little color he
had left drained from his face, leaving it haggard and ashen. Hal snorted.

“I really do not suppose that she will be content to slap your
wrist and forgive you this time, Robin. The crown is the only thing that she
holds sacred, which makes this day’s work not merely treason, but sacrilege,”
he broke off as the footman brought word that their captors desired some speech
with them. “I’ll go,” Hal said, rising from the chair as vigorously as if he
had not just spent a day of terror following a sleepless night. He turned back
as Robin caught his arm.

“Why did you come with me?” Rob’s voice was a cracked whisper.

Hal grinned mirthlessly. “Oddly enough, I believed in you,” he
said. “I must have been moon-mad.” He made his way to the roof of the house,
looking down at the sea of gloating faces below. A perverse recklessness seized
him and he called out for a safe passage to see the Queen, and for hostages
against their safe return, and was taken aback by the scoffing reply. The crowd
parted to show him the ordnance that had been brought up and aimed at the
house. It was a house and no fortress; it would not take much time for cannon
to bring it down about their ears. Hal felt a moment of panic then, trying to
remember if Libby were here or at home, and called the attackers craven, to
threaten war upon a house sheltering women. Let the women go, he promised, and
they would have war enough to content them. “We are every one of us fully
resolved to lose our lives fighting,” Hal taunted, as Robin joined him to echo
Hal’s sentiments, and denounce their enemies. Eventually it was agreed that the
women should all be allowed to leave the premises, and that accomplished, the
rebels withdrew to discuss their alternatives. Robin and Hal, backed by old
Lord Sandys, who felt that he had nothing to lose, urged defiance unto the
death.

“Better to die as men with sword in hand, than crawl to Cecil,
and meet death on a scaffold,” Sandys told them. “There is no honor in an axe.”
Almsbury paled at the cold certainty of violent death facing them, and urged
them to surrender, almost frantic with fear: he had seen the cannon. Other
voices added their fears to Almsbury’s, wearing down Robin’s resolve, and
submerging his martial ardor in a morass of self-doubt and depression.

One veteran among them, Owen Salisbury, reading the earl’s
intent, spun Essex around to face him. “I will not be taken, like a dog in a
kennel!” he shouted, but the earl shook off his hands without appearing to
notice him. Almsbury, his sweating palms leaving damp stains on the soldier’s
doublet, pulled him away, ignoring the look of scorn turned on him. Without
another word Salisbury doffed his steel cap and stalked to the window, throwing
it wide, and jeering at the crowd below, daring one of them to shoot him.
Seconds later he staggered back, his hand pressed to the side of his head,
blood pouring between his fingers. “Damned fool,” he muttered, “I would that he
had shot a little lower,” and then gave a little sigh as he lost consciousness.
There was a matching sigh from across the room as Almsbury, fainting, crumpled
into a heap on the floor. Hal eyed him with distaste as he gave orders for the
care of the wounded man, and the relocation of the swooning lord.

After a time Essex returned to the roof to call out his terms
for surrender, though forced eventually into agreeing to no more than the
promise that the Lord Admiral should arrest them and treat them in a civil
manner, that they be granted a fair and impartial trial, and that his chosen
clergyman, Master Ashton be allowed to join him in prison, to requite his
spiritual needs.

Hal stood beside Robin, rigid with suppressed rage and shame,
then turned to follow him to the ignominious conclusion of their enterprise. He
struggled to hold his temper in check when he was told to kneel before Henry
Howard, the Lord Admiral, but shrugged and dropped to one knee with an
insolence tantamount to a slap. A mutter of outrage swept the gathered forces,
but was waved down by the Admiral. Southampton ceremoniously presented his
sword to the man, and grinned to see Robin do the same, for all the world as if
he were granting the admiral a signal honor. They followed the guards through
the jeering crowd and out to the barge that waited to convey them to Lambeth
Palace and from thence to the Tower.

Libby woke heavy-eyed to someone shaking her furiously. “Wake
up, you little fool!” spat Penelope, Lady Rich, raising her hand to slap her
drowsy friend, but Libby finally sat up, looking around confusedly.

“Penny? What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” Lady Rich snapped. “While you’ve been dreaming
here, Robin and Hal were fighting for their very lives! They’re—”

“Hal! Is he—was he hurt? Killed?” Libby’s soft voice rose to a
shriek, and she struggled with the bed clothes, flinging them aside and
scooping her clothes, Hal’s clothes, from the floor. She gazed at them for a
moment, then crumpled to the floor, holding his shirt to her face as she cried.
She was dimly aware that Penny was still talking, but she couldn’t take in the
words until her friend tore the shirt from her hands and shook her again.

“Will you
listen
to me, you infuriating child? They are
still at Essex House. They went back there when the City betrayed them. Robin
thought that the City would rally to him, when he disclosed the plots against
him, but no one followed. He said that no one even seemed to hear. It must have
been horrible!”

“It was,” Libby replied dully. “I was there.” Lady Rich looked
at her as if she were mad, then at the men’s clothing strewn about the floor,
and dropped to sit on the floor at her friend’s side.

“Oh,
clever
Libby!” she breathed, slipping her arms
around the girl. “I wish that I had thought of that! I should have been there
too!”

“No, you were right, it was horrible and there wasn’t anything I
could do. I left them in Fenchurch Street; what happened later?”

“When they got to Ludgate, they found that they couldn’t pass
through, so they came back by river. Robin was fired upon, and there’s a hole
straight through his hat. His page and a brace of bystanders were killed! When
they reached the house, they had to fight their way in, and Gorges had let the
hostages go, to help the cause he said. To weasel out, I say, and it certainly
took the marrow out of their mad plans to use the hostages to gain an audience
with the Queen. She’s been enjoying herself, too, from what I hear, wanting to
join the sortie from Whitehall as if she thought they were going a-hunting.
They’re all sitting around discussing their choices. Robin is declaring his
intention to fight to his last breath, and Lord Sandys, the old fool, is egging
him on. I suppose that they will surrender sooner or later: the Lord Admiral
brought up cannon. They let me go a few minutes ago, and I came here because
Hal was worried about you. If he knew that you’d been in the city with them,
his hair would go stark white!”

I watched wordlessly as Eden washed and dressed Richard’s
corpse, her tears falling silently onto the fresh linen. She would allow no one
to help her in this, not even Sylvana. The boy had drawn his last breath a few
moments since, in my arms. He had felt his approaching death, and his eyes had
betrayed his fear. He clung to me gratefully when I had reached out to him,
then eased into an unconsciousness that had lasted less than a quarter of an
hour before his breath sighed out and the tension in his muscles relaxed. He
looked peacefully asleep when Eden had finished laying him out, the lines of
his agony smoothed away. Only the dark smudges below his eyes and the clean
bandages on his hands suggested that he had suffered. The shutters had been
closed and curtained against the light, and candles burned. His sister would
watch throughout the days, and I the nights until Richard arose, if arise he
would. Eden collapsed into the cushioned chair that I had had placed beside the
bed, her tears spilling through her fingers and her shoulders shaking with
silent sobs. I leaned over her, and kissed her hair as the approaching dawn
drove me to seek my rest. I heard Rózsa in the next room as the trance claimed
me. Word was waiting for me when I woke the next evening: Essex had fought his
rebellion, and lost.

The earls, I learned, had been given ten days to prepare their
defense, although they were not allowed to communicate with each other. Cecil
had visited them, and displayed an aversion to the use of torture to gain the
needed answers that confused his fellow members of the council. Watching the
still form in the candle-lit chamber, I felt a bitter smile twist my lips at
that news, reflecting that at least Richard’s tortuous death had bought that
much; Hal would be spared what Richard had suffered.

The false dawn colored the horizon late on the third night of
our vigil, and no hint of life showed in the corpse as Eden watched in despair.
I leaned forward, alerted by some sense that I could not describe, and took the
frantic woman’s hand, turning her attention to the boy’s pale face. He gave a
twitch, as one who dreams of falling, and the eyelids fluttered open. With a
glad cry she kissed him, then rushed from the room, returning a few minutes
later with a clean kitchen knife. Her hands were shaking too badly to open her
vein and feed her brother, and I took that office, cutting swiftly and holding
the wound to the boy’s mouth, speaking quietly all the while, much as one would
to any invalid awaking from a long and serious illness. Richard did not speak,
but eagerly drank the blood that his sister supplied him, and collapsed into a
heavy trance before the rising sun cleared the skyline. I bandaged Eden’s
wound, which was already beginning to close, and fell into my own trance there
in the bedside chair.