The Rogue's Princess (25 page)

Ah, that reminded her. She gave him a tremulous smile. ‘Hart no longer. I’ve left home.’

‘Oh, darling.’

‘But it’s not so bad. I’m staying with a very kind family – and Grandmother, Faith and Edwin have all called on me. And Ann – I had great trouble fending them all off with their offers of help.’ None of this was exactly a lie.

‘I wish I could shake some sense into your father.’ Kit wrapped his fingers round hers on the bars.

‘He is following his conscience, as I am following mine.’

‘Then the sooner I can make you a Turner the better.’

‘Aye.’ Mercy pulled out the grass ring to show him she still wore it. Kit’s eyes were suspiciously bright as he touched the faded plait. She could hear noises behind her. The
warder was stirring from his lair. ‘I must go. I’ll come back when I can.’

Kit smiled as she made to get down from the bucket. ‘Mercy?’

‘Kit?’

He stood back so she could see him gesture in step with the words. ‘
My thoughts are wing’d with hopes
.’

She performed the response on her little platform. ‘
My hopes with love
.’

‘Remember, love and hope, Mercy!’

Hugging that thought to herself, she hurried to retrieve Grandmother and return her home.

In July, the trap so carefully set by Walsingham snapped shut on the main players in the piece. Since January, Babington had run a scheme to get messages in and out of Mary Queen of Scot’s prison in watertight beer barrels, thanks to an obliging brewer. No one in the Catholic conspiracy realized that Walsingham and Lord Burghley, the Queen Elizabeth’s chief advisers, were well aware of their every move, intercepting the letters then sending them on to the intended recipients. The brewer was their man, happily taking bribes from both sides.

Will laid the situation out to his brothers as they took a boat from London to the Queen’s summer retreat at Richmond.

‘I can’t believe that even hotheads could be so foolish,’ he told them in a low voice, anxious to escape the attention of the oarsmen. ‘It seems that after one drunken night of treasonous talk –’ he gave Tobias a pointed look – ‘Babington finally lost his patience with the slow creep of the plot to release his captive queen. He decided to cut to the chase, sending Mary
a letter in which he proposed a new plan: invasion by friendly foreign powers, a rising of English Catholics, Mary’s release – and assassination of Elizabeth by a party of gentlemen, himself included.’

‘That man has a death wish,’ commented James.

‘Aye, I saw a copy of the letter in Lord Burghley’s keeping. But there’s more.’

‘Need there be more?’ asked Tobias. ‘Is that not enough to hang them?’

‘Aye, but they were never what this is about. The kernel of the matter is that Mary replied.’

‘Gads. This … this means a queen will be arraigned for treason to her fellow monarch, to whom she swore loyalty,’ marvelled James as he worked out the implications of that fatal step. ‘I’ve never heard the like! It is going to set the fox among the hens on the continent, and north of the border.’

Will nodded. ‘But her note was all Walsingham required. Like the cat outside the mouse hole, he swooped to scoop up the London end of the conspiracy. Babington and friends are on the run, very soon to be caught, I would hazard, as the whole realm is against them.’

‘So there is no connection being made to our friends in the Marshalsea?’ Tobias knew that only distance from these events would keep Kit safe.

‘I know not. But Babington and his crew face the ultimate penalty for their crimes. We’ve run out of time: we can’t leave Kit in prison if they start passing down verdicts of hanging, drawing and quartering.’

Will, James and Tobias paced the corridors of Richmond Palace hoping to pick up on any word concerning their brother’s
fate. Lord Burghley and his son, Robert Cecil, issued from the Queen’s privy chambers, heads close together. Both dressed in black robes, the elder looked like a well-fed mink while the younger had a pale hawkish face. Friendly to the Laceys, they had helped them on many occasions before.

Will made the approach. ‘My lord, Master Cecil.’ He gave a practised bow.

‘Dorset – and your brothers!’ Lord Burghley gave the three a bow and rare smile. ‘What brings you to court in such force?’

‘These are troubling times. We are concerned for the safety of our Queen and those near to her,’ Will gave a subtle nod to James – his wife was one of the Queen’s ladies and thus in the front line for any frenzied attack on the monarch. ‘We came seeking news. Have all those involved in the plot been apprehended think you?’

Burghley gestured to them to follow him into a window niche. ‘Not yet, but they have quit London and will soon be caught for there is no loyal man alive who would shelter them. They will be behind bars and the head of the conspiracy will soon find her imprisonment much more confining than of late. You need not fear for Her Majesty: we have doubled the guard. No one will get close to her.’ He patted James’s arm. ‘Or those who attend upon her.’

As agreed on the river, Will now moved into the second part of their approach and feigned a disgusted expression. ‘It has come to my notice, my lord, that one of my late father’s by-blows has got mangled up in this business in some distant manner. A low kind of man – a player of all things – but he was taken up well before the recent exchange and now languishes in the Marshalsea. I am convinced of his innocence
– he’s a fool drinking with such fellows, but not a rebel – but he could be an embarrassment to the family if he comes to more notice in the matter.’

Burghley did not look surprised to hear of this – few details escaped the attention of the Queen’s chief minister. ‘A side-shoot of your family you say?’ He glanced at his son, but Cecil made no comment. He had been the source of their original information that Kit had been arrested, but as a good friend to Will at court did not reveal that the earl had been possessed of the knowledge for some weeks. ‘Well, well, I can see how that might worry you.’ He shook back the long sleeves of his robe. ‘Make a note of it, Robert. We’ll look into it.’

That was as much as the Laceys could hope for at this time. ‘You have our thanks.’ Will bowed.

Burghley and son strode away, in a hurry to deal with the far more pressing matters of a rebel queen and the missing conspirators.

James’s wife, Lady Jane, emerged from the Queen’s apartments. She was sweetly rounded with child and would soon be retiring from the Queen’s service to give birth, but not soon enough for Tobias’s overprotective brother. Her fickle mistress disliked talk of childbearing in her presence and preferred to ignore the fact, demanding a swift return to duties after the smallest of absences for lying-in.

‘My love.’ She kissed James on the mouth before greeting Will and Tobias. ‘How went your interview with my lord Burghley? I saw you talking so retreated to give you space.’

‘Burghley will investigate the matter, which is better than putting Walsingham on the trail.’ James caught his wife in his
arms. ‘But how fare you this day, my little bird? All well?’ He placed his hand on her stomach.

Jane wrinkled her nose at him. ‘My feet hurt.’

He lifted her into his arms. ‘Then you must rest – and I know a quiet corner.’

Jane smiled hopefully and kissed his neck. ‘Indeed, my lord, then I suppose I must be commanded by you in this.’

‘Aye, marry, you must.’ Whisking her away with a flash of pink petticoats, James strode off in search of his private retreat.

Tobias gave up any hope of seeing James for the rest of the morning. ‘Is there anything else we can do here?’ he asked Will.

‘Nay.’ Will folded his arms and leant back against the stone wall, closing his eyes in weary thought. ‘But I think you should go in search of our fair messenger and tell her what’s afoot. This plot has come to its crisis and Kit must be even more careful in his response to questioning. If we can get word to him through her good offices, we will be yet more obliged to the damsel.’

A very good point. Tobias waved his farewell, already heading for the river. Will straightened up and set his shoulders firm, turning his attention to showing his loyal face about court, an activity he had no stomach for, but one that had to be done. Not for the first time, Tobias was grateful he did not bear the burden of the earldom.

18

What none of them had anticipated was that Mercy would be taken up for questioning before she could be warned of the new developments. Tobias arrived at the Dobbses’ house to learn that she had not come back from her visit to the Marshalsea the day before. At first, the Dobbses had not been much moved on their lodger’s account, assuming she had gone to visit friends or been allowed home, but when Edwin had called to ask after her, they had concluded that something more sinister had occurred. Edwin had gone to the Marshalsea only to be denied entry by the smirking warder.

Tobias knew Edwin as a nodding acquaintance from Porter’s fencing school where he too was a pupil. He took Mercy’s brother aside.

‘Tell me what the warder said exactly.’ ’Sbones, he hoped this wasn’t spiralling out of control. He would never live with his conscience if the little maiden suffered for doing as they had asked.

Edwin gave a helpless gesture. A pleasant enough fellow, he was not at his best in a crisis, reduced to handwringing. ‘He said that Mistress Cherry Pie –’

‘What?’

‘His term for my sister. She takes fresh-baked pies in to your brother, sir. He said that she was wanted for questioning and that he had been ordered to detain her overnight. The officials should be there now. I’ve no idea what it’s all about: Mercy’s never done anything to anyone.’

Tobias had a fairly shrewd idea exactly what it was about. Now the Babington plot had been foiled, the authorities were dotting their final ‘i’s by checking any person with the least connection to the business. Mercy had made herself a person of interest by her faithful attendance on Kit. But this was where the Laceys had to draw a line too and come forward to help.

‘I’m sending word to my brother, the earl. He’ll get her out, I promise.’

Edwin shook himself into action. ‘And I’m going to my father. The City merchants won’t like it one bit that one of their daughters has been detained so unfairly.’

Aye, that was a good idea: the power of the City fathers was not something even the most aloof of governments could ignore. ‘Tell him we’ll meet at your house as soon as the earl can gain leave from court.’ It was a fair way to Richmond; Tobias had already spent a good part of the day sailing up and down the Thames. ‘It may not be until late this evening, but we’ll be there, I promise you.’

No fool, Edwin blinked his pale-blue eyes, trying to fathom why an earl should show such friendship to a merchant family. ‘What is afoot, Master Lacey? Is my sister in danger?’

Tobias thought it very likely, knowing how harsh London prisons were on anyone caught on the wrong side of the door.

‘Deep business, Hart, but Mercy is clear, I promise you. We will protect her for, after all, she is to be our sister.’

Edwin choked. ‘That … that man really means to marry her?’

‘That man is my brother and a finer person you will never meet. And, aye, he’ll marry her, come hell or high water, so I wouldn’t stand in his way if you value your skin. I predict that when he gets out of prison – and he will get out – he’s going to quick-march your sister to the altar before you can say Robin Goodfellow.’

Mercy was afraid. She had never experienced such bone-shaking terror since the last plague outbreak had swept though the city, taking half the infants with it under its black cloak. But that had been a smouldering fear, an anxious watch over the family to see if any showed signs of the illness; by contrast this was a blaze of emotion that left her cowering in the corner of her cell.

The warder – oh, how she hated that man, God forgive her – had waited for her to unpack her latest offering of gooseberry pies before informing her with relish that she was about to become his newest guest. He’d given her no time to send out a message, but marched her straight past Kit’s door to a cell along the corridor. On the watch for a visit, Kit had seen her go by and responded with angry shouts and kicks to his door. He had gone ominously silent after the warder had left her alone.

‘Kit?’ she whispered into the corridor. That was no use: he’d never hear her. ‘Kit!’

No reply.

She had passed the night in dark despair, sure that Kit had done something desperate and been punished for it. By morning she was near frantic – and hungry and thirsty to boot.

The gaoler came back in the early morning with a plate of food. ‘Here you are, mistress. I’ve orders that you can’t mingle with the others in the common yard, so you get waited on. Not as good as your baking.’ He placed it on the pallet bed next to her. Mercy shrank further back against the damp wall, her fist clutching the dried-grass ring tight against her chest.

The gaoler scratched his hose. She closed her eyes, resisting his attempt to draw her attention his manhood as he stood before her. ‘It makes me sorry to see you in here, Mistress Cherry Pie, but you should make the best of it. It won’t go so hard with you if you keep me well disposed towards you.’ He adjusted his belt, wafting the rank smell of unwashed body in her direction as he posed before her.

Mercy swallowed bile and buried her head in her arms.

A rough hand landed on her head, catching in the hair straggling from her coif. He tugged at a lock. ‘Such a pretty thing, aren’t you, but no denying you are all woman. Would you purr for me if I stroked you, I wonder? I can see why the player keeps you at hand.’ A coarse palm drifted over her bodice, but retreated when she curled up in a ball, denying him access to any exposed skin.

‘I can see you need to think on’t. But then you’re not going anywhere, are you?’ He fiddled with his hose again, chuckled and left to carry on with his rounds.

Seeing where his hands had just been, Mercy left the bread he had brought her to the mice.

Kit had been dumped down in the pit again for his protest at Mercy’s arrest. His bones ached. A sharp twinge with every breath gave him cause to suspect that the warder had fractured
a rib with his latest beating. Yet that was nothing to the pain of his imaginings as to what his sweet Puritan was going through. If she was hurt, he would murder the gaoler – he knew he would not be able to stop himself.