The Maiden's Hand (9 page)

He had a presence. A high vigor, an almost frenzied lack of restraint, an ineffable yet undeniable quality that commanded attention.

“Lark?” he prompted.

She scowled at him. “I cannot think how to make you less noticeable, my lord. Let us go. We should hurry.”

The grin he flashed her shone like a beacon through the darkness. She shot him a quelling look. “Do not smile. It makes you even more conspicuous.”

“Ah.” He sobered instantly. “No smiling. I can’t think why I would smile around you, anyway.”

“Our work is deadly serious,” she snapped, giving vent to her temper. “The life of an innocent man is in danger. We do not break into prisons, risk our lives, stop executions and defy the law to amuse ourselves, but because it is right.”

“And if you should happen to have a good time doing it?” Mockingly he fanned his face with his cap. “Jesu forfend!”

She brought her fist down on the mooring post. “You’ll probably be caught and named a fugitive.”

His laughter caressed the night air. “A vain hope, sweetheart. It was Oliver Lackey they condemned and hanged. If you did your job well…”

“We did,” Snipes assured him.

“Then no one even remembers the poor sod.” He spread his arms, the magnificent black cloak fanning out around him. “I ask you, what resemblance bear I to that rude, unshaven, unwashed, ill-mannered commoner?”

“He talked just as much,” Snipes observed. His withered arm stirred uselessly at his side. “I wish you would have more respect for the risks you’re taking.”

Oliver swallowed. He seemed discomfited. “You were caught, weren’t you, Phineas? That’s how your arm was injured.”

Snipes turned to face the river. The cold breeze blew his loose breeches. “It was a long time ago. I broke.”

“Dr. Snipes,” Lark said softly.

“I broke,” he said, his voice harsh. “I think about it every day.” He shook his crippled arm. “This is my reminder. Snipes was a coward. Snipes betrayed his friends.”

“As you said, it was a long time ago. We should go,” Oliver said.

Lark allowed him to help her into the wherry. As always, there was more to his touch then simply a handhold. It was a lambent heat that grazed her, subtle as a secret kiss. He made her breath catch and her stomach lift.

That was the problem, she decided, settling on the low-backed bench. She tried not to watch him as he swept off his cloak and pulled on a pair of shiny leather gloves,
slashed at the cuffs. He picked up the oars and began rowing with a graceful, concentrated rhythm. She felt too much pleasure being around him. It couldn’t be right.

And Lark had spent all her nineteen years being taught what was right. She had faltered only once, and that memory was as much a part of her as Phineas’s bad arm was to him. But like him, she had to go on.

Turning astern, she glanced at Dr. Snipes, who worked the tiller. A staid and silent man, he rarely revealed his thoughts as he had a few moments earlier. Yet he, too, seemed caught by Oliver de Lacey, watching the younger man as a bettor might eye a champion prior to a wrestling match.

Once they were out in the middle of the river, Oliver’s powerful oar strokes enhancing the strong current, he began to talk.

“Tell me about this man we’re going to rescue, this Richard Speed.”

Lark looked to Dr. Snipes again. How much should they reveal? Snipes lifted his shoulders in bewilderment.

Oliver seemed to sense the unspoken question. “Surely you can tell me those things which are a matter of public record. If the poor cove’s to burn at Smithfield, then he’s gained some fame.”

“He preaches the Reformed faith,” Lark said. “He’s a young man, but very learned, a powerful orator. He has been known to persuade whole towns to renounce the pernicious evils of the Church of Rome.”

Never breaking the rhythm of his oar strokes, Oliver fixed her with a probing stare. She wondered if he could see her in the moonlight, or if her hooded cloak kept her in shadow.

“Are the pernicious evils of the Catholic Church any
more odious than those of Reformed nobles who stole church treasures during the Dissolution?”

She clutched the sides of the wherry as it whispered through a burble of rapids. “Richard Speed gained no personal wealth by espousing his beliefs. He preaches that faith—and faith alone—saves. Not paying church indulgences. Not chanting spells or counting beads. Faith. A simple enough concept, don’t you think, my lord?”

“So if I believe in God, I go to heaven? Even a sinner like me?” he asked, reaching forward, drawing back, somehow teasing her with the motion.

“I find it beautifully complex,” Lark aid. “Mysterious. To the queen’s advisers, it must be horrifying.”

His grin flashed like quicksilver. “True. The idea that a soul can be saved without paying the church for the privilege must be unthinkable to Bishop Bonner.”

She was pleased and surprised by his insights. “Precisely.”

“Why did you wait until now to rescue this paragon?”

“We didn’t know he’d been taken. When we discovered he had, we could not determine where he was being held. That’s usual, you know. The most dangerous prisoners are held in secret places so the populace won’t rise to free them.”

He continued to question her about Speed. Long after ordinary oarsmen would complain of burning shoulders and blistered hands, Oliver continued to row, covering the distance with a velocity even Piers could not have matched.

The slightest hint of the new day tinged the horizon. The creak of fishing gear joined the sound of lapping oars, and the watery smells of the river grew dank with the hint of sewage, for they were nearing the City. The spires of London rose, ghostly shadows in the distance: St. Paul’s
like a hatless gent, its dome destroyed by lightning two years before. The rambling turrets and lance-sharp weather vanes of the famous Strand residences, including St. James’s Palace, the queen’s favorite London lodging.

From deep within a pink fog of smoke and morning mist thrust the four turrets of the White Tower in the middle of the Tower of London.

“I had a brother named Richard,” Oliver said abruptly.

Lark felt a pang of curiosity. In truth she knew little of his background save that Spencer admired and trusted the de Lacey family.

“He was called Dickon,” Oliver went on.

There it was again, Lark realized. That low, vibrant quality of his voice. The tone that made her want to sit forward, enraptured, and listen to him for hours.

“Dickon,” Oliver repeated. His voice grew soft and heartbreakingly wistful. “I never knew him. He died before I was born.”

“My lord, I am so sorry,” Lark whispered, and without planning to, she reached out and touched his knee. She wondered what it was like to have brothers and sisters—a true family, for that matter. She would never know, for she had grown up isolated and shut away from other children. “I’m certain the two of you would have been very close.”

“Aye.” A mysterious, pained expression crossed his face. “I wish to God I had known him.”

For a moment his sorrow was so devastating and real that she yearned to take him in her arms, to press his head against her breast and weep for him.

Then, on a sudden, the sun broke through the clouds behind him. It had an almost eerily propitious timing, like the midsummer sunrise over the giant stones of Salisbury Plain.

Just for the blink of an eye, the red fire of the rising sun gave him a glowing halo. More than ever he looked like an angel, pious and pure, too perfect to be mortal, his pain raw yet somehow otherworldly. Yearning and wonder rushed through Lark, and a thickness came to her throat.

“Oliver,” she whispered helplessly.

He glanced down at her hand upon his knee. A devilish gleam sparked in his eyes, and the moment was gone. It had passed so quickly that Lark decided she had imagined it.

“I say, Dr. Snipes,” Oliver declared, “I think the lady’s beginning to like me.”

She snatched her hand away. “Your insolence is boundless, sir.”

“So is my patience, where you are concerned.”

She hugged her knees to her chest and studied the looming shadows of the city. “Almost there.” She twisted around to look at Dr. Snipes. “We have never risked Smithfield before.”

“No.” He ran a finger round his high collar. “It won’t be the same as a hanging. Even bigger crowd. The queen has mandated that a member of her council be present. Besides that, there will be churchmen, wardens, aldermen, hangers-on.”

“Relic collectors,” Oliver added. “Abraham men, cutpurses—”

“There’s usually one executioner and his assistant,” Snipes said.

“Does he take bribes?”

“Of course. They all do. But he can only do so much.” Wet the kindling. Start the blaze downwind. Those techniques are hardly merciful. They merely prolong the agony.”

“Or prolong a man’s life until we intervene.” Oliver seemed none the worse for having rowed all night. “What is your plan, then?”

Lark twisted to look at Dr. Snipes once again. He huffed out his cheeks, adjusted his hat, and seemed to concentrate intently on the tiller.

She turned back to Oliver. “I’m afraid we don’t exactly have one.”

Rather than voicing disgust, Oliver winked at her. “Leave it to me, then. You’ll not regret it.”

As he explained his intentions, Lark found herself both caught by his enthusiasm and distrustful of it. He seemed driven to seek out excitement. He spoke and acted like the most committed of Samaritans. Yet she had no doubt that once the work became tedious, he would abandon it. He was capricious and easily bored.

Rescuing a famous man from Smithfield was a challenge he could not resist. To him, it was a whim. A means to feed his masculine pride.

“Ever seen a burning?” Dr. Snipes asked Oliver.

Oliver never broke his rhythm. “’Tis not a favored entertainment of mine. But I understand they draw quite a crowd.”

“Aye. Everyone from piemen to aldermen to Gypsies.”

“Gypsies?” Oliver looked up, hot energy dancing in his eyes.

“Of course,” said Snipes. “A crowd is a Gypsy’s livelihood.”

“All those purses to cut,” Oliver said.

Lark heard a curious sharpness in his tone. She had never met anyone even remotely like him. He gave her a crooked smile filled with humor and joy, yet at the same time the murky shadows still haunted his eyes.

Neither his mind, nor his tongue, nor his rowing arms rested during the voyage down the Thames. When the travelers disembarked, he insisted on stopping at Bridewell
Bridge over the river Fleet. There he made an odd sign with grass and sticks, refusing to explain his actions except to say they would aid his scheme.

Half running in their haste, the three wended their way northward, to Smithfield. The crowd thickened around St. Bartholomew’s. People’s faces were hard, their eyes bright with morbid anticipation. An air of barely suppressed violence hung like a fog over the masses as they moved and shifted across the broad field.

Lark stared with her mouth open and her heart thudding almost painfully. Oliver removed his hat, furrowed his hand through his hair, and said, “God’s teeth.”

“I’ve never seen so many people in one place before,” Lark whispered.

“My father used to come here to trade horses,” Oliver said with a shudder.

“This is impossible,” Dr. Snipes conceded wearily. “They have defeated us this time. We shall never get him free with this crowd all around us.”

“No!” A sense of dread and loss pounded inside Lark. She knew Richard Speed only through his writings, but those had convinced her that the man was touched by grace. His ideas were so simple. So pure. Faith brought a soul to God. Faith alone.

For that, the Catholics would put a man to death.

“We cannot let them murder him.” By standing on tiptoe, she could see the tops of the stakes, black with soot from the many fires before this day. She shuddered. “And in such a fashion.”

Oliver’s hand closed around hers. She would never get used to that jolt of sensation she felt when he touched her. In fact, it was getting worse. Sometimes she felt it when he merely looked at her.

“I said I would help you do this.” The certainty in his tone was that of a man who did not know the meaning of the word failure.

Snipes wiped his brow. “We can’t even get near the pits. He’ll be gone by the time we fight our way through this crowd.”

In her stomach, Lark felt the echo of an ominous drumbeat. A cluster of chanting clerics surrounded a mule dragging a hurdle. The prisoner was being brought to the execution pits.

Oliver tossed his cloak back over one shoulder, cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Reprieve!”

“Oh, that’s wise,” Lark snapped. “We’re supposed to be inconspic—”

“Reprieve! Reprieve!” Others took up the call. “Save him! Reprieve!”

Oliver made a bow, flourishing his cloak. “You see, the crowd is our ally, not the enemy.”

“You heard only a few voices out of thousands,” Lark said. “The rest would riot if they were deprived of the spectacle.”

“Oh, they shall riot.” As they passed through the thick of the mob, Oliver seemed more and more agitated. Almost pleasurably excited. “You must move in close to the pits so you can help the good reverend to safety when I give the signal.”