Queen's Ransom (35 page)

“Jenkinson?”
I said in tones of loathing.
“Him!”

“Him?”
Bruni echoed my tone precisely, with a query in it. “You sound less than loving, signora. Well, which is he?” He waved an arm, indicating the silent row of candidates.

I saw from the gleam in Jenkinson’s eyes that he had guessed the tack on which I was steering. But I did not let my glance linger on him, or on any of them. I looked instead at Bruni.

“If you want him, you can have him and welcome but you won’t find him here. By God, you won’t!”

“Really?” Bruni’s voice was disbelieving and my captor’s grip tightened.

“Tell this man to let go of me!” It was easy to let it out as a pathetic wail. “Of course Jenkinson isn’t here! That . . . that bastard has made off with goods that I own, worth several hundred pounds—and I meant them to ransom a servant of mine who is a prisoner in France! I can’t rescue her now. My poor Dale!” The frightened shake in my voice was real. Fear for Dale was ever-present in me. I had only to give it utterance. “And if you’ve been asking for him under the name of Jen-kinson orVan Weede,” I said, “then it’s no wonder you’ve not found him. He’s calling himself Ignatius Wilkins and making out that he’s a doctor of theology or something of that sort. God knows where he is now!”

They had all understood by now. “The lady is right,” said Harvey forcefully. “He is no better than a thief and we’ve been after him ourselves. He’s probably going to make off by sea, but we haven’t found out yet which ship he’s going on.”

Klara, sitting in the basket chair, still with a hand pressed to the side of her head, asked a question in her own tongue. Sickening terror went through my stomach. Klara might not have followed the conversation. She might not understand what we were about. And she was old and frail and could easily be frightened. If they distrusted us and asked Klara if she could point Jenkinson out; if they threatened her . . .

Longman started to answer her, in short, rough tones, but before he had spoken three words, Bruni snapped at him to be silent, quelling any attempt by Longman to transmit information to Klara. The Italian then addressed Klara himself. He spoke her language very haltingly, but she could follow; she was answering. She nodded once but then clutched at her head as though the movement had hurt her. I heard her speak the name of Jenkinson. I dared not look at him.

It was my father-in-law who cleared his throat and asked: “What’s she saying?”

Bruni turned to him and shrugged. “She bears you out, more or less. She says he was here—well, that we guessed. We knew he was traveling with a Master Blanchard, and we knew this house was taken in Master Blanchard’s name. We have inquired among landlords, who often know one another’s business. But Klara says she has not seen Jenkinson since yesterday. She says she thinks there was some dispute between him and you.”

I breathed a silent, thankful sigh. Klara, bless her heart, was no fool. She had heard the hatred with which Bruni spoke the name of Jenkinson and she had heard me reply, uttering the same name in tones of loathing and rejection and she had a little English, too. She had grasped the essentials: that these men were after him but didn’t know him when they saw him, and we didn’t mean to give him away.

“She may be lying.” The Turk considered Klara thoughtfully. “How can we be sure how much English she knows?”

“There’s an easy answer to that.” Signor Bruni was capable of gallantry but not apparently of humanity. He gave an order to one of his henchman. I didn’t understand what he said, but I understood well enough when I saw the man put a poker into the fire. I gulped in horror. Bruni actually smiled at me. “Jenkinson is reputed to have a gentleman’s manners. If so, he will not let me hurt her. Now will he?”

My inside churned again with nausea. I pressed a hand to my stomach and felt, through my skirt, the dagger that was hidden as usual in the pocket just inside my overskirt. I could grip the sheath from the outside and slide the other hand in, and draw . . .

It would be a terrible risk. My throat might be cut before I could get my blade out and stab backward. But either way, I would no longer be any use as a hostage and the men might have a chance to get their own daggers out and attack the enemy. I could see Jenkinson bracing himself to surrender. Heart pounding, I closed my fingers on the sheath.

Klara heeded none of this. She had been sitting propped in the corner of her chair, leaning her head on her hand. Now she sighed, so that all eyes turned to her. Then she slumped forward and slithered untidily to the floor. Bruni uttered a startled exclamation and the Turk, moving quickly, knelt down beside her and lifted her head. Blood ran from her ear, and I saw to my distress that one side of her face was distorted, as though a hand were pressing on the flesh and dragging it downward.

The man holding me was leaning forward to see. For a moment, his attention was not on me and his grip slackened. I caught the eye of Longman, who was nearest to me. He understood and in the same moment, he leapt at us and seized my captor’s wrist. With the knife gone from my throat, I twisted free and threw myself aside as the scene dissolved into pandemonium. Daggers appeared as if by magic. In a moment, the two sides would be killing each other.

That wasn’t at all what I wanted. I knew what I wanted. I knew how to get it, too. I’d found that out in the stableyard of Le Cheval d’Or on the night of the fire. It had worked on Dick Dodd. Last night, Klara had threatened the hysterical Helene with it. The pail of water was in its usual place by the hearth. I picked it up and threw the contents over the fight.

“Stop that!”
I screamed. “I hate the very name of Jenkinson! I want him dead! He isn’t here! We can’t find him! If you can, Signor Bruni, then for God’s sake go and do it and kill him for me!”

They all stood there, a lot of very wet men, gazing at me in astonishment. My father-in-law’s jaw had dropped so far that he actually looked funny. Jenkinson was grinning broadly. “Go, Signor Bruni,” I said, “and find the man who is calling himself Dr. Ignatius Wilkins, and let him out of this world before he does any more damage to decent, innocent people! Go!”

Signor Bruni removed the velvet cap that throughout all this had sat firmly on his head. Holding it in his hand, he bowed to me. “There is great passion in your voice, signora. I almost believe you.”

“You would do well to believe her!” barked Blanchard. “Jenkinson would steal a rattle from a baby if it happened to be gold!”

“And he’s as slippery as an oiled eel,” I added. “We know he hasn’t taken a passage on any boat for England. We think he might set off for somewhere else, to throw us off the scent. Go after him and save us the trouble!
Please!
”

There was a short, tense pause, during which Bruni and the unsuitably named Morelli conferred. We waited. My father-in-law, using his imagination, said roughly to Jenkinson: “I told you to keep watch at the back door. Why do you never do as you’re bid?” and Jenkinson said: “I’m sorry, sir,” in tones of humble apology.

Then Bruni bowed to me again. “Very well. We think, signora, that you are speaking the truth. We will be your good hounds. We will hunt down your quarry and dispatch him. Our apologies for troubling you. And”—he looked toward Klara—“we regret that. Do what you can for her.”

With that, Bruni gathered his men with a gesture, and they were gone, like shadows, out of the back door. We heard them rowing away.

“They regretted that she was hurt!” I said hysterically, yanking the poker out of the fire. “They . . . I could hardly believe my ears!” I was soaked in sweat, shaking with reaction. “Of all the . . .”

“You didn’t mention the
St. Margaret,
” said Jenkinson.

“He may not be on it; we can’t be sure.” I tried to pull myself together. “Besides, naming the ship would have sounded too pat.” I stumbled across the room to Klara and knelt at her side. “Oh, never mind about Wilkins! Come here, all of you. Klara is in a very bad way.”

Klara’s condition was alarming. She was breathing, but in a stertorous fashion. One eye was wide open but did not seem to see us and the other was closed. Jenkinson spoke her name. Slowly, the closed eyelid opened. He said something to her in her own language and in a slurred fashion, she answered.

He looked at me across her. “She didn’t want to give me away,” he said. “She says we bought food for her and that I cooked breakfast on that first morning, after we had kept her up so late the previous night. No one ever did that for her before, she says.”

We fetched neighbors to help her, and they called a physician. But by morning, she was gone; one more casualty, I thought, of this bitter journey. It was highly likely that her seizure resulted from the bang on the head when she was thrown against the wall. But we did not mention that, or refer to our violent visitors at all and neither did Klara, although for the first hours of her illness, she was still able, in a slurred fashion, to speak. It transpired that Jenkinson had told her about Dale; and although she didn’t know about the treasure, she understood that we were in Antwerp to arrange a ransom, and that our errand was urgent. She told her neighbors and the physician that she had been taken suddenly ill after supper and when the physician noticed the bump on her head, she said she had done it when she fell out of her chair.

It troubled our consciences but we accepted her charity. If we had told the truth, we could have been kept in Antwerp for weeks while the authorities investigated. Klara was beyond our help by daybreak, but Dale lay in desperate need of rescue.

Klara van den Bergh was a good woman and we did what we could. She had no living relatives, so we organized the funeral and paid for it. She was buried on Monday, with all the dignity we could arrange at short notice and we were all there except for Helene and Jeanne, who together with Clarkson, had sailed for England that morning. On Tuesday, as intended, the rest of us left Antwerp aboard the
Britta.

We saw the
St. Margaret,
a scruffy vessel if ever there was one, lying at the quayside with stores being carried on board, probably preparing to leave as well. I wondered, very much, whether Dr. Wilkins would travel aboard her, and where Bruni and Morelli were, but I preferred not to make inquiries. I didn’t even speculate out loud.

Betrayal

Catherine de Médicis was no longer young and I doubt if she was ever beautiful, or had any of Elizabeth’s spirit of incantation. But she was royal; she had style. When we paid over the ransom for Dale, the business was performed with ceremony and panache.

It also took nearly a week to arrange, which exasperated us all. Brockley was thankful to see us, but became taciturn with frustration and impatience; and my father-in-law, his nerves already undermined by the Levantine Lions and ten days of seasickness on the voyage to St. Germain, turned into a bundle of ill-temper and jitters.

His state of mind was not improved either by the alarming news that greeted us in France. The civil war was now in full flower. The prince of Condé and his Huguenots had seized Orléans, despite an order from Queen Catherine to lay down their arms, and although St. Germain was still quiet, violence stalked the rest of the land. The glimpses we had caught of it on the way to Paris had been nothing by comparison. “I won’t be happy till I see Dover’s white cliffs again,” Blanchard said to me fervently.

But the day for which we had striven and waited came at last. Queen Catherine presided, dressed in blue velvet and seated with dignity in a great carved chair halfway along a gallery in St. Germain. A trestle table, spread with a blue cloth, stood before her in the midst of the gallery; ladies and courtiers, all in blue and silver, stood behind her and to either side. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows. It was the seventeenth of May, and the days had grown warm.

At the exact hour of nine in the morning, the two parties came in from opposite ends of the gallery. Through the east door came the Seigneur de Clairpont, followed by a clerk carrying two scrolls, and finally by Dale, between two helmeted guards, each grasping an elbow.

I entered through the west door, walking between Brockley and Blanchard, and behind Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, who was leading the way. Behind us came Jenkinson, and after him, Harvey, Ryder, Arnold, and Sweetapple, carrying the ransom between them in two chests. I had been lent the same apartment as before and the chests were part of the furnishings. They made an impressive way to bring in the treasure.

The parties advanced toward each other and halted, a few yards apart. There was a pause. But De Clairpont and his clerk had moved a little aside, and we had a clear view of Dale. I had been allowed to send her fresh clothes and a comb, and she was in a clean gray gown and a white cap, with good shoes on her feet. But her hollowed, bloodless face was dirty and the hair straggling from under the cap, though combed, was in rats’ tails from lack of washing, and even from where I stood I could see how sunken and haunted were her eyes. Beside me, I knew that Brockley had seen all these things, too. I felt him jerk forward, and gently I placed a hand upon his arm.

We waited. Queen Catherine smiled, enjoying herself, enjoying the little impromptu ceremony that she had created to enliven a morning that would no doubt, otherwise, have been full of more portentous business. “Proceed,” she said.

“You know what to do.” Throckmorton had briefed us carefully. “Go on.”

Our men stepped forward with their burdens and placed them in the center of the table in front of the queen, opening the lids. “Show us,” said Catherine.

One by one, the items were lifted out and ranged on the table, on either side of the chest. Dishes, bowls, goblets of chased gold; the crenellated golden salt; the scalloped silver salt; and the remaining smaller items.

The clerk undid one of his scrolls and came to lay it on the table, trapping the corners under some of the ornaments to keep it flat. Edging forward and craning my neck, I saw that it was headed
Inventory.
Throckmorton and De Clairpont both went to examine the objects. They handled them, conferred together, referred to the list, nodded. My father-in-law, beside me, quietly seethed. “The goods have been inspected. Clairpont sent assessors three days ago! What’s all this?”