Queen's Ransom (34 page)

Before I went upstairs, I said to Jenkinson: “I would have gone after Jeanne, you know. I wouldn’t have left her out in the street.”

“I’d have gone after her myself,” he said. “But I wanted to see first if it brought Helene into the open. Well, we know our enemy now. But we must still beware. On no account must she get in touch with Wilkins again, and the Lions are still prowling.”

Misdirection

I woke late in the morning, surprised at first to find myself in a different room. As I sat up, still groggy with tiredness, my four hours of oblivion having been nowhere near enough, I realized that what had woken me was the sound, in the adjoining room, where Helene and Jeanne had been locked up, of my father-in-law thrashing Helene. I almost put the pillow over my head and left them to it. Even now, Dale was still not out of her cell; things might still go wrong, and in that case, Dale would scream more loudly than this.

Then in the midst of Helene’s crying came a brief babble of words. “I was trying to do right! I was trying to do right! . . . oh! . . . oh!” At this, I scrambled out of bed and grabbed a wrapper. As I did so, the sound of blows ceased. Luke Blanchard said something, harshly, and I heard him slam out of the room, locking it after him.

After a moment’s thought, I stepped out to see if he had left the key in the lock. He had. Quickly, I fetched a pot of salve from my little array of remedies against illness or injury on the journey. I had included them when packing for the ride to Antwerp. I had used some of the salve to help Dick Dodd when he was hurt but half the pot was still left. I took it in to Helene.

She was lying on the bed, sobbing bitterly, while Jeanne tried to comfort her. One side of Jeanne’s face was reddened, as though Blanchard had struck her, too, perhaps for trying to defend her mistress. At the sight of me, Helene snatched up her own pillow and hurled it at me.

“I hate you. I hate you. And I hate all men. The only men I’ve ever known who were kind to me were my father and Dr. Wilkins!”

“Wilkins? Kind?” A more unlikely description of the odious doctor would be hard to imagine. It completely took me aback.

“Yes, kind!” Helene wept. “He was always good to me. He said I was truly pious, an example to other women. He approved of me. Now I’m told that everything I thought was right is wrong. And I have a guardian and look what he’s done to me! And last night that hateful Stephen Longman held me while you . . . you . . . and Master Jenkinson accused me . . . and I don’t want to be married. I want to be a nun and never have to be mauled about by any man. That’s what the nuns say husbands do. They maul you and push themselves into you. I wish I were dead!” wailed Helene.

“Madame,” said Jeanne. “Please go.”

“I’ve brought some salve,” I said. “It will help. Here.”

I handed it to Jeanne, and then took myself off. I did indeed pity Helene. But for all that, I pitied Dale much more.

Helene and Jeanne remained locked up—“and will do so until it’s time to get them to their ship on Sunday evening,” Blanchard said when I joined him in the kitchen, for a curious meal that was half breakfast and half dinner. The men were there as well, and Blanchard jerked his head at Clarkson. “He’ll take them to the
Leopard.
I don’t want to set eyes on Helene again.”

I said diffidently: “I suppose she was only behaving as she had been taught.”

“Aye. That Wilkins has a lot to answer for,” Arnold said, and Mark Sweetapple, his mouth being full at the time, nodded agreement.

“She said she wanted to be a martyr,” said her guardian brusquely. “She longed to die for the faith—she told us that at Douceaix, remember? Sanctimonious nonsense. We’ll hear less about that from now on.”

He sounded grimly satisfied. I made no comment. I was still too tired and too anxious about Dale. “Where’s Jenkinson?” I asked.

“He and Longman went out while you were still abed. They’ve gone to see if there’s room on the
Britta
for myself and Harvey here. I meant it when I said I would come to St. Germain.”

Jenkinson and Longman reappeared an hour or so later, looking weary but pleased with themselves.

“We found the captain of the
Britta,
” Jenkinson said. Our meal had trailed on and we were all still lounging about in the kitchen and nibbling desultorily. Jenkinson helped himself to cold meat pie and a glass of wine. “We’d have needed to talk to him anyway. One or two things have occurred to me. One was that our friends the Levantine Lions, who turned up at the Leaping Fish, may think of making inquiries among sea captains in case I’ve booked a passage to anywhere. I wanted to make sure that Captain Ericksen wouldn’t tell them anything. They were ahead of me. They’d spoken to him already.”

I had been sitting in relaxed fashion on a settle. I shot upright. “What?”

“It’s all right. Ericksen is one of Gresham’s captains and he takes good care of those Gresham recommends as passengers. He is discreet. He told them he’d never heard of anyone called Jenkinson, Van Weede, or Blanchard and if I hadn’t gone to see him this morning, he would have been in touch with me to know who they were and what he should say if they came to him again. I explained them to him. He has heard of the Lions. He will continue to deny all knowledge of us. But there’s more. It struck me last night or rather this morning, as I was dropping off to sleep, that our friend Wilkins will presumably be making his way back to France, just like us, and how embarrassed we would all be if we found that he was traveling on the
Britta,
too.”

We all stared at him, appalled. Mark Sweetapple swallowed a piece of cheese the wrong way and started to cough. Longman banged him on the back.

“But we couldn’t!” I said. “We couldn’t sail on the same ship as Wilkins! Even if I stayed in my cabin the whole time to avoid him—I can’t bear him—the real treasure would be there on the ship as well!”

“Quite,” Jenkinson agreed. “But you need have no fear. I asked Ericksen outright if Wilkins had approached him. I said we knew Wilkins and that there was a dispute between us and that it wouldn’t do for us to travel together. I added that we needed passages for two extra people, which might, as it were, make up for any loss of business if he turned Wilkins down. He said we needn’t worry. Wilkins was ahead of us, too. He approached Ericksen this morning, apparently, and asked about passages—”

“Oh, God!” said Blanchard.

“—but Captain Ericksen didn’t care for the trio of cut-throats who were with him. Captain Ericksen is very respectable as well as very discreet.”

I burst out laughing. “Riffraff!”

“Quite. That’s what our good captain thought. He told Wilkins that he had no room for any more passengers, and recommended him to try a ship called the
St. Margaret,
which is sailing two days after us. She’s not a very seaworthy vessel, I understand.” He gulped some wine. “Maybe,” he added dispassionately, “she’ll sink.”

Jenkinson had had a further errand while he was out. He had found a buyer for two of his little gold bird brooches. Though so small, they were valuable, sufficiently so to provide us with some spare money as well as the wherewithal to repay Gresham. If we had not found the real treasure, I would have given Jenkinson the imitation one in return. Since we did have the genuine treasure, I settled with him by handing over the ruby pendant and a gold figurine, which we reckoned came to roughly the same value. We had not dared to try selling those in Antwerp, because they had presumably been stolen from someone or somewhere there in the first place.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jenkinson said when we discussed these fiscal adjustments. “I can take them to England and I’ll certainly make a good profit on them there. Meanwhile, you’ll have your collateral back by tomorrow. I’ll enjoy selling these far more than I would have enjoyed selling cheap gilded plate. It’s truly a pleasure to do business with you, Mistress Blanchard.”

When all this was over, everyone went off to rest a little more, although we got up again for supper. The daylight was fading and Klara had lit candles. We were all still tired and did not talk much as we ate the soup and dumplings she provided. Harvey took a tray up to Helene and Jeanne. Afterward, we all wandered into the kitchen where Longman and I helped Klara to scrape platters and put them in hot water to soak.

“I think,” I said as we were drying our hands, “that I must go upstairs soon and have some more sleep. I shan’t feel myself again before tomorrow morning.”

“We all need a good night’s rest,” Jenkinson agreed. “And we’ve earned it, what’s more. But I don’t think we can go to bed just now. I can hear oars outside. I think we have callers at the back door.”

We all cocked our heads. He was right. There were low voices just outside, and boots were scraping on our landing stage. Someone tapped on the door. “Klara van den Bergh? Are you within?”

Klara, grumbling under her breath, went to the back door and opened it. Then, in violent contrast to the gentle tap and the quiet call, a crowd of men crashed through into the room. Klara shouted indignantly and tried to bar their way but one of them picked her up bodily and threw her aside. She struck her head on the handle of the open door, and slid moaning to the floor. The rest of us sprang up, tiredness forgotten. Jenkinson, Sweetapple, and Harvey all instantly produced daggers. Blanchard shouted: “Who are you? What do you want?” and groped for a sword hilt that wasn’t there because he wasn’t wearing it.

Then he desisted and so did the others, because the foremost of the intruders made straight for me, jerked me in front of him, and held me there with a knife blade against my jugular. Just, I thought crazily, as Charpentier had done, back in Le Cheval d’Or.

“Back against the wall!” said my captor. “All of you. And sheathe your weapons if you value this woman’s life.”

They all obeyed at once, but as they angrily sheathed their daggers, Sweetapple said in furious tones: “And would these gentlemen, by any chance, be calling themselves the Levantine Lions?”

*    *    *

There had seemed at first to be at least a dozen intruders but there were actually six. Four looked like local hired bullies. One of these was holding me and from the smell of him, his more regular employment was gutting fish. The other two were different, however. They were well dressed and well armed, with velvet caps and sword hilts tooled with gold, and the big man with the heavily handsome face and the dark curling hair was surely an Italian, while the lean brown fellow whose eyes were brown, too, but not, somehow, the European shade of it, and whose beard was not clipped in the European fashion either, was just as surely a Turk.

I was not, therefore, unduly surprised when the Italian, in heavily accented but fluent English, said to Sweetapple: “You are right, my friend. But to reach that conclusion, you must have heard of us and most likely were expecting us. In which case, you have had dealings with one Anthony Jenkinson.”

No one answered. The hand gripping my chin jerked my head back a little farther. I considered scraping my heel down his shin but there are degrees of ruthlessness and one can sense them. This man was more dangerous than Charpentier had been.

Klara moaned again and the lean brown Turk noticed her. He went to her and helped her quite gently to her feet, saying something in what sounded like an awkward version of her own language. He seemed to be apologizing. He examined her bruised head, added a few words in a comforting voice, guided her to the basket chair, and put her into it.

The Italian, meanwhile, was addressing me with what could almost have passed for genuine sorrow. “We regret the need for this, signora. But alas, you are the only means by which we can keep this meeting from turning into a brawl. It will not please us to cut your throat, and I pray that God and Mother Mary will keep you and all your companions wise and quiet, so that we do not have to.”

Blanchard made a peculiar noise, halfway between a snarl and a snort. Mark Sweetapple shot me an anguished look and ground his teeth loudly enough to be heard. Harvey muttered a swear word. The others remained quite still. We waited.

The Turk said: “We waste time. I, too, regret the disrespect to the young woman, although in my country, a woman who wishes to be respected is not found thus in the company of men. If it comes to the point, Signor Bruni, I will give the order if you wish.”

“Thank you, Morelli.” So these were indeed the two who had inquired for Anthony at the Leaping Fish. The Turk had masqueraded as a Venetian. “But let us trust,” said Bruni, “in the chivalry of Signor Antonio Jenkinson. He has set out to endanger the prosperity of our countries, and he has killed some of my friends, but perhaps he would not care to kill one of his own, and a lady at that.” He gazed inquiringly at the row of men against the wall. “Well? Which of you is he? Speak out, Signor Jenkinson!” He could not keep the hatred out of his voice. The
signor
was a sarcastic courtesy.

My sleepiness had been banished but I was still tired. There are, however, times when tiredness is almost an advantage. When the brain is too weary to be its usual busy and officious self, deeper knowledge and sounder instincts sometimes rise to the surface and take charge. In that brief quiet moment, I recognized and saw how to use the fact that had just been vouchsafed to us all.

Jenkinson, talking of the Lions, had described how he and his men had disposed of many of his pursuers, on the Caspian Sea, in Rome, and in Marseilles. In the stableyard of Le Cheval d’Or, the leader, Portinari, whose proper business was to point Jenkinson out and leave the rest to his underlings, had taken a hand himself, presumably because he had run out of underlings. Jenkinson believed that a second set of hunters had followed the first, and it looked as though he was right. Here they were, Bruni and Morelli. Jenkinson thought that Portinari had left messages for them, to help them follow quickly, and no doubt he had. They apparently knew he had been using the name ofVan Weede. But a few important details had been missing.

These were surely the two who had inquired after Jenkinson in St. Germain, and certainly the two who had asked for him at the Leaping Fish. In neither place had they given a description of him, and no wonder. They did not know what he looked like. He was here in front of them now, and they had not recognized him.