The Maiden's Hand (30 page)

“Then you’re a fool, little Lark.” Even before he finished speaking, he lunged, arms outstretched, ready to snatch and imprison her.

“No!” She took hold of the brazier by its base and swung it in a wide arc. The glowing coals flew at him.

Lark heard his animal bellow of rage and pain. Racing madly, she leaped for the door and wrenched it open. She plunged down the narrow stairs. With fleeting relief, she saw that the guards had departed. The halls and galleries of the palace sped past in a blur.

As she rushed by an open window with a view of the river and marshes, she had only one lucid thought.

Oliver.

She stumbled in her ungainly haste, sinking down on one knee. She had to escape, had to reach Oliver before—

“Stop!” Wynter’s hoarse yell rang down the open gallery.

Lark picked up her skirts and ran, a lumbering run, her awkward bulk slowing her down. She was lost in the palace, lost in the gloomy halls and cramped apartments.
Her only aim was to get away, to get to Oliver somehow, to stop them from murdering him.

She took every turn and staircase she encountered. She came to a narrow passageway leading to a lightless hole.

One door across the corridor stood ajar.

Footsteps flayed the stone floor behind her.

Swallowing a sob of despair, she slipped through the door. The room was a chapel, small and elegant as a jewel, with two tapers burning and the host ensconced in a monstrance.

Lark blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. On a prayer stool in front of the altar, a lone figure knelt.

Lark gasped and pressed her knuckles to her mouth.

The woman turned slowly as if the motion caused her pain. Her face might have been handsome once, but it was white and pinched now, the eyes glassy, the lips bluish.

In her horror, Lark forgot to breathe, to move. Then, somehow recovering, she sank to the floor in the deepest curtsy she could manage.

“Your Majesty!” she said in a tremulous voice.

Queen Mary held out her hand.

“W
hat do you mean, you lost her?” Bishop Edmund Bonner glared at Wynter. “I thought it was a simple enough task, even for you.”

Wynter hitched back his shoulders. Bonner’s censure stung more than the hot coals Lark had flung at him. Wynter knew he looked and smelled abominable. Some of the coals had hit him in the face, raising blisters, one at the corner of his eye. The bitch had almost blinded him. Other coals had singed his hair and bored holes in his garments.

“My lord bishop, the woman is clearly mad. I could not have known how viciously she would attack me.”

“You might have at least had a guard or a servant standing by.”

“I had to be careful, you know that,” Wynter snapped. “I dared only use those two bumbling Spaniards, and she slipped right past them—or else they turned a blind eye.”

“You never did quite learn whom to trust, did you, my lord?” Bonner’s face was blunt and coarse, totally unforgiving. He, perhaps more than any other man of the realm, had reason to want a Catholic heir to the throne, not the
wily, inconstant Elizabeth, who had the audacity to think for herself.

The only man who wanted a Catholic heir more than Bonner was Wynter himself. The seed had been planted long ago, in the mind of a bewildered boy abandoned by his father. It had been nurtured by the brutal splendor of his childhood, growing with the years spent in the shadow of his beautiful, bitter mother.

Doña Elena had been as remote and cool as an alabaster madonna. She had taught Wynter two things above all else: to serve God and to seek revenge.

By taking Lark’s child and giving it to the queen, Wynter could accomplish both. More than that, he would finally win complete control over Lark.

He had always loved her; couldn’t she see that? But she had to submit to him. He had been trying for years to master her will, first by appealing to her craving for affection, then by trying to convince her that her worth was measured only by his esteem for her.

Until Oliver de Lacey had come along, Wynter had had hopes for success. But the arrant knave had built up Lark’s aplomb, had honed a fine edge on her conviction. In more ways than one, she had slipped from Wynter’s grasp. Her defiant behavior in the tower room had proved that.

He glared down at a blister rising on the back of his hand. He must bring Lark back to him. He would bend her will to his. His honor depended on it.

Wynter resented Bonner’s part in the plan to keep England bound to the True Faith. Presenting the queen with a newborn babe was simply too brilliant an idea to share. Making a beloved sovereign’s fondest wish come true was an honor Wynter meant to claim all on his own.

“The woman’s a danger to our purposes.” Bonner
paced, his robes swishing on the Turkey carpets of his opulent apartment. “She must not be found by anyone but you and your servants. Is that understood?”

“Of course, my lord bishop.”

“It would be an unmitigated disaster if she were. She is young, with child, and noble. Need I say more?”

“No, my lord bishop.”

“When she
is
found,” Bonner said, selecting a fat orange from the bowl on the table, “see that she dies in childbirth.”

Lying in general was a sin, and lying to one’s sovereign queen was out of the question.

On her knees in front of Queen Mary, Lark told the truth about her deathbed promise to Spencer and her hasty marriage to Oliver de Lacey.

“De Lacey?” the queen asked, her voice tired and thready. She leaned forward over the swollen mound of her belly. She was not with child; the protuberance was misshapen and unhealthy looking. Weary lines of melancholy scored her sagging cheeks.

She was dying. Lark knew this with chilly certainty.

“The de Laceys of Lynacre.” Lark tried not to seem impatient by casting glances over her shoulder. “His father is the earl of Lynley.”

“I know. Stephen de Lacey was last known to have taken to the high seas in pursuit of his daughter and a certain Protestant rebel. Would you know anything about that, my lady?”

Lark’s heart sank. Her knees ached from pressing into the stone floor. The distant drumbeat of the procession to Smithfield throbbed into the silence. Rather than panic, she felt cold determination. She would defy the queen of England, if she had to, in order to reach Oliver in time.
The dilemma was leaving the palace before Wynter seized her again.

The queen shook her head. “Do not answer that. The truth would condemn you in the eyes of the law. A lie would condemn you in the eyes of God.”

Lark expelled her sigh of relief quietly. She felt no awe at meeting her sovereign for the first time. Instead she felt a strange empathy for a woman whose unrelenting dogma had robbed English men and women of their freedom and some of their lives.

The queen’s hands were never still; she held a rosary of coral beads wound through her fingers, and she twisted the strand constantly, restlessly. Lark had the sense that some sort of unfinished business haunted Queen Mary.

“Ma’am, are you quite well?” Lark asked at length. “Shall I call for someone?”

“Nay.” Mary indicated a glass bell at her side. “Someone will come when I ring. I came here to be alone. To be away from the hovering physicks and hand-wringing women.”

Faint shouts drifted in through the unglazed window. The corners of the queen’s mouth turned down. “Do you know why the crowds gather outside the palace gates?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Aye, you do, but like the rest of them, you are afraid to tell me so. They’re waiting for me to die.”

Lark bit her lip and stared at the stone floor. The ancient cracks were filled with brown dust.

“Some of my nobles—I suppose I must no longer call them
my
nobles—have gone to Hatfield already. I wonder how
she
is receiving them.” Mary’s knuckles shone white and taut as she clenched and unclenched her hands around the rosary beads.

Footsteps approached, ringing in the passageway out
side the chapel. Lark froze; then, without asking leave, she stood and backed into the shadow of a stone pillar.

Through small, dark Tudor eyes, Mary watched her. Lark held her breath, wondering if the queen would call out and betray her.

She kept silent. The sound of the footsteps subsided.

“Ma’am, my husband has been condemned to die today,” Lark said.

Mary lifted her chin. “I know that. I am ill, but not ignorant.”

Daring to further test the queen’s forbearance, Lark said, “I beg you for a reprieve.”

“Your husband is a confessed heretic.”

He had confessed only to keep them from questioning
her
, Lark knew that now.

“I cannot interfere in the sacred work of the church,” said Mary. “Surely you understand that.”

“Then I weep for England,” Lark burst out, furious and uncaring now. “I weep for a country where good men are sent to die and evil ones are advanced at court.”

Mary’s thin, graying eyebrows lifted. “Who?” she demanded. “If you would cast aspersions on a member of my court, I would know his name.”

Just for a moment, Lark hesitated. It was risky. But anger spurred her to blurt out Wynter’s name.

Mary absorbed the news with mild interest in her waxen face. “His mother, Elena, was a great favorite of my own mother. Wynter has been a devoted subject—to me and to the True Faith.”

“But when does devotion turn to obsession? Would you want an adviser who would steal a baby from its mother’s arms?”

Mary seemed to catch fire, bending forward like a thin
flame in a stiff breeze. “Why would you accuse him of so pernicious a plot?”

“Because he threatened it.” Lark rested her hands on her middle.

“Christ have mercy.” Mary leaned back against the priedieu. “Such rumors have gone about London since the day I married Philip of Spain.” She stared at the guttering candle on the altar. Her face seemed to soften. Lark recognized the look on the queen’s face. Poor Mary—sick, abandoned, dying, she still loved her husband.

“Even now, Wynter is searching the palace for me,” Lark said.

“Is he?” Mary rang her crystal bell.

Lark nearly screamed in fury and frustration. The queen had merely been toying with her, delaying her. Now she would be seized, given into the care of a madman, and—

“Make haste,” the queen said to the bodyguard who appeared in the chapel. “And let no one see you.” She lifted her gaze to Lark. “You’re to have an escort and an eight-man barge at your disposal to take you to whatever destination you desire.”

Lark stared at the queen. The silent message that passed between them was unmistakable. The queen would not put a stop to the execution, but she would not keep Lark from trying.

“Come,” she said, holding out her frail arms. “Embrace me.”

She felt no more substantial than a wisp of straw, Lark thought as she gently clasped the queen by the shoulders. The smell that clung to her was familiar; Lark knew it from Spencer’s last days. It was a feeble, musty perfume. The smell of death.

“Godspeed,” Mary whispered so that none but Lark
could hear. “And when your babe comes, perhaps you could name him Philip.” That painfully wistful voice would haunt Lark all her years.

Shaken by the encounter, she soon found herself on her way to Smithfield. She prayed she would not be too late.

As he was led to the burning grounds at Smithfield, Oliver seemed, even to himself, to be a different man. It was a great irony that once before he had been taken to his execution.

But oh, how changed he was since then. He had been loutish and shameless, pleading for his life. Today some steadfast core held his dignity intact.

Lark had given him that. He wondered if she knew. Her love had transcended care and fear, putting solace and acceptance in its place.

He drew comfort from the fact that the young evangelist Richard Speed was safe and married to Natalya. Lark, too, would be safe in the bosom of the boisterous, loving de Lacey brood.

Life would go on. The Princess Elizabeth would take the throne; Lark would bring forth their child.

He wondered how long she would grieve for him.

A howling wind whipped over the throng of spectators at Smithfield. Oliver looked across the grounds and saw his fate: the hooded executioner and his masked assistant, a pile of kindling and rushes heaped around a blackened stake thrusting up from a pit of sand.

For you, Dickon.

The thought came out of the dim, distant past and took him by surprise. He had never known Dickon. Oliver realized that all his life he had carried a burden of guilt. His brother had died. Oliver had lived on.

He barely heard a droning voice reading the charges, all the outlandish crimes to which Oliver had willingly confessed. He paid no heed to the chanting of prayers, the swish of swinging censers, the low roar of the crowd. He refused his final chance to recant—laughed in the priest’s face, in fact.

Many jeered and cursed him, but others cried out for a reprieve. The world was changing. Men and women were learning to take a stand. One day their numbers would be so formidable that not even death could stifle them.

Soldiers took him to the stake and raised his manacled hands high. A thick chain went around his chest. To beat back a sudden welling of horror, Oliver caught the eye of one of the men and winked.

The man looked away and crossed himself. Oliver felt the cold wind streak across his face. He heard a bellowed order, saw two torches touch the kindling at the edge of the sandpit. The crowd was a vast sea of faces and noise, yet he had never been more alone.

In absolute solitude he would make this journey. His destination was the mystery of the ages.

He heard the firewood crackling. The quick little flames were still at the edge of the pit, perhaps six feet away, but creeping closer, eating up the fuel. He wondered if he would be able to stand the pain.

Somewhere in the mob, a child began to cry.

Oliver told himself the agony would be fleeting.

The hiss and crackle of the kindling crescendoed to a roar.

So this was it. The waiting was over. His final journey would begin here, now.

To his surprise, a prayer—wordless and heartfelt—poured through his mind.

Much less to his surprise, he felt like vomiting.

No. You’ve prepared yourself for this. At least do this. For the sake of your child, die well.

Prepared. He wondered if that were even possible. Horrible, pleading words crowded his throat. He became a wild animal, instinctively terrified of the flames taking hold at his feet.

So he would fail after all, opening his mouth to recant and beg them to strangle him instead.

Strength was as simple as summoning an image of Lark. He grew tough, stubborn, more a man than he had ever been. And deep inside him, in a secret, dark place, dwelt a part of him that hungered to know the deepest mystery of all. The final thrill.