Face Down Before Rebel Hooves Part 10

"Then I will go to Streatlam." She was about to say more when she noticed the odd expression on Lionel's face. "What troubles you?" she asked him.

"This talk of servants makes me wonder what happened to Sir Walter's man. He took Jacob Littleton with him when he left England."

Baldwin frowned. "Pendennis traveled alone by the time he came to Hamburg."

Thinking that, most likely, the fellow's fate had naught to do with anything, Catherine nevertheless resolved to ask after Jacob when she next saw Sir Walter. As Susanna was wont to say, one could never tell what small detail might prove significant.

Chapter 18.

The way to Brancepeth Castle wound through mountainous terrain, well wooded with oak trees. On the second day of their journey, Marion stuck to Susanna's side like a burr.

"This is Weardale," she remarked when they came to a place where the road branched. "The border between Durham and Westmorland is that way." She gestured toward the west.

Northumberland, Susanna recalled, was to the north.

A mile below Brancepeth Castle, they reached the ford across the River Wear. The entire entourage halted. The men at arms went first, then the earl and countess. The countess's women had a considerable wait before their turn, time enough to dismount and stretch and unearth a bit of cheese and bread from their packs. Susanna took the opportunity, along with Joan Lascelles and Margaret Heron, to slip behind convenient bushes and relieve themselves.

They remounted a short time later.

The water was exceeding cold, and moving faster than Susanna had expected. Just the sight of it made her queasy. "Onward, Turmeric," she urged her horse, but the mare shied as droplets splashed up by other hooves struck her full in the eyes.

Without warning, the saddle begin to slip. Susanna gasped and flung her arms around Turmeric's neck. As she clung, she felt the leather seat beneath her shift again, until all that held the sidesaddle in place was her own weight. With one knee hooked over the pommel and both feet inserted in a sling buckled to the left-hand side of the saddle, she had little ability to maneuver. She could not even break free of the contraption. If it slid completely off Turmeric's back, she would go with it and be dragged beneath the water by its weight.

Seeing her distress, one of the men-at-arms waded into the river. He seized her about the waist and pulled her from the saddle, which dropped into the water behind them. Ignoring it, he carried her to safety, unharmed and barely wet. One of the others led her horse to sh.o.r.e.

Shaken, Susanna stood on dry land looking back at the ford. A chill swept through her that had nothing to do with the temperature of air or water. Something had caused her saddle to slip, but what? Accidents happened. She knew that. And yet . . .

"Eleanor! You might have died!" Joan Lascelles engulfed her in a warm embrace. "Poor chick!"

She seemed so upset that Susanna ended up trying to soothe her. "Oh, no," she insisted. "A fall would not have killed me."

"A drenching in cold water can be fatal," Cecily reminded her.

Susanna shivered again. She was right. If she'd gotten soaked to the skin in temperatures this cold and been unable to secure dry clothing and get warm again quickly, she might well have died of exposure. But that had not happened. Nor had she been trampled by rebel hooves while caught in her own saddle.

She looked around for her equipment and found Guy Carnaby examining the girth buckle. "A billet strap broke," he informed her when she came up beside him.

"How could that happen?" She bent to examine both buckle and strap. "Did it fray?" She had owned this saddle for many years.

"If leather is not well cared for, it can become brittle and break. It looks to me as if your man neglected his duties."

Making a noncommittal sound, Susanna allowed Master Carnaby to put her up on a pillion behind one of the men-at-arms. Leigh Abbey's grooms were taught to be diligent; she would have expected her saddle to be so well maintained that such a thing could not happen. But Lionel had only posed as a groom. He'd been trained as a gardener.

"Could immersion in sea water weaken the leather?" she asked.

Carnaby allowed that it could, then issued the order to bring along Susanna's horse and the damaged saddle. They resumed their journey.

Without further incident, they reached Brancepeth. Susanna, Margaret, and Joan had almost finished installing Lady Northumberland's possessions in the chamber a.s.signed to her when Marion reappeared, fresh from her reunion with her own mistress.

"Lady Westmorland sends me to fetch you to her," she told Susanna.

"What does she want with me?"

"You must ask her that yourself." Marion's face was pale, her manner distracted, and as soon as she'd escorted Susanna into the small room where the countess waited, ensconced upon the only chair, she fled.

It was a study, but Susanna had little time to appreciate the abundance of books or the fact that a casket overflowing with letters stood open on a table. One look at Lady Westmorland and Susanna could not blame Marion for making such a hasty retreat.

Where Lady Northumberland's eyes tended to be lit by enthusiasm, this other n.o.blewoman's burned with a darker fire. They narrowed in suspicion the moment they lit on Susanna. In combination with high color and tightly compressed lips, her whole visage gave the impression she was about to explode into some sort of emotional outburst.

"My lady." Susanna made her obeisance, expecting at any moment to be denounced as an imposter.

"You were responsible for my brother's arrest."

Susanna blinked at her in amazement. "Madam, I was not."

"Do not trouble to deny it. I know the truth."

In the face of such an outrageous statement, Susanna could think of nothing to say.

"Six weeks ago, the queen turned against the duke of Norfolk and ordered his arrest."

"Six weeks ago, madam, I was still recovering from a serious accident."

"Before that accident," Lady Westmorland insisted, "you sent word to England of our plans."

In truth, Susanna was not certain of the precise date of Eleanor's death, but something seemed askew in the countess's arrangement of events. Letters could travel quickly between merchants abroad and their counterparts in England. It followed that official messages made the journey with even greater dispatch. But without Walter to ask, Susanna had no way to determine if the duke's sister could be right. It did not matter, she decided. She would in no case ever admit that Eleanor, through Walter, might have alerted the queen.

"I know all about you, Lady Pendennis." Bitterness laced Lady Westmorland's words. "You sought out our agent in Augsburg, offered to serve as a courier, then betrayed our plans to your husband."

Eleanor had approached Dartnall? Susanna frowned. That was not how Walter told the tale. He'd said Dartnall recruited Eleanor.

"I do not understand, madam. I never told Sir Walter anything. Indeed, I knew pa.s.sing little to tell. To be honest, I saw doing a small service for the earl of Northumberland as the means by which I might escape my husband."

"Why should I believe you?" The countess leaned forward, her face ruddy with anger. "You are wed to a man who has been a thorn in the side of all right-thinking men for years. He has made of our honest plans to advance our interests a seeming treason. He has helped thwart the efforts of anyone outside that sacred circle of advisers to Elizabeth. Why would he hesitate to do so again at my brother's expense?"

"Because he knew nothing of my actions or your plans." Susanna feigned outrage. "Nor did he know that I meant to leave him. I fell into conversation with Master Dartnall and he spoke a little of what was happening in the North. Enough to tell me that I might be able to help him and help myself at the same time."

"Your husband knew naught of these meetings?"

"I took care that he should not."

Abruptly, the n.o.blewoman stood, advancing until she was only a foot away from Susanna. "Marion tells me you were in an accident and that, as a result, suffer holes in your memory. This is pa.s.sing convenient. Will you now claim 'twas during one of those gaps that you sent word back to England?"

"I did not do so." Susanna was taller than Lady Westmorland and more st.u.r.dily built, but she did not feel that gave her any advantage. An almost palpable threat emanated from the smaller woman. "I know where my loyalties lie, my lady. Remember that I did serve as your courier. If I'd betrayed you, if I'd turned that letter over to Sir Walter, you may be sure I would then have stayed as far away from Yorkshire as I could."

"Do you support deposing a heretic queen and replacing her with the queen of Scots?"

"I support the restoration of any church that allows for the dissolution of a marriage."

Susanna spoke the words on impulse but when the countess was surprised into a laugh, she knew her instincts had been sound. It was one of the world's great ironies that the break with Rome, occasioned by King Henry's desire to divorce his wife, had led to the establishment of a religion in England that made it impossible for anything but death to sever the bonds of matrimony.

With another abrupt movement, the countess of Westmorland resumed her former position in the chair. "You may return to Lady Northumberland."

Concealing her relief, as well as the trembling of her hands, Susanna scurried away. If she'd had any idea how to get out of the castle without being challenged, she'd have been tempted to flee into the night, for her close call at the ford had not unnerved her half as much as the interview with Lady Westmorland.

Chapter 19.

Durham November 14, 1569 Nick watched the coming of the rebels with Jennet at his side. Reportedly 2500 strong on foot and horse, they sang as they marched along the route to the cathedral. There they intended to break the law of England by hearing Ma.s.s.

No one would stop them. The bishop of Durham had prudently removed himself and his family from the city. That he'd destroyed all the gla.s.s in the cloister, because it depicted the life of St. Cuthbert, had not endeared him to English papists.

Nick's sources of information were excellent. The merchants of York, concerned about the possibility that rebels might lay siege to their city, had sent men into the countryside to find out what was happening. Some had stayed. Others had brought back word that Northumberland was at Brancepeth Castle, three miles from Durham, and that armed men were flocking to him there. Gentlemen. Farmers. A physician Nick had met recently in York. Nick did not need to be a strategist in order to guess that when the rebels gathered enough strength they would march against the most convenient large target.

Most of those filing into Durham appeared to be simple countryfolk, although they did wear crosses on their chests. In the vanguard rode a cl.u.s.ter of women. Two of them, the countesses, he presumed, had also dressed themselves as crusaders, although they scarce embraced either piety or poverty. Their palfreys were caparisoned in silk and velvet, the saddles decorated with flowers made of gold and pearls.

Their ladies in waiting, less colorful, most riding astride, accompanied them.

"Praise G.o.d," Nick whispered when he picked out Susanna's familiar form among them and saw that she looked fit. There was no indication she rode with the rebels under duress. That meant her disguise still held.

Pulling Jennet after him, Nick threaded his way through the crowd, getting as close to the women as he dared. He'd not risk speaking to Susanna. For the present it would be best if she did not notice him. But as soon as Jennet warned her he was back in England, there would no longer be a need to keep his distance or worry that his sudden appearance might startle her into betraying herself.

Someone jostled him, hard, in an attempt to steal his purse. "Dragon water!"

At the precise moment he spoke, Susanna glanced in his direction. Nick froze. Their eyes locked. Then, without giving any sign that she knew him, she looked away and did not allow her gaze to stray toward him again.

"She recognized me." Jennet sounded smug. "'Twill be an easy matter now to speak to her."

"Go then, and G.o.dspeed." Nick was tempted to accompany her now that Pendennis's dire predictions had come to naught.

Within seconds, Jennet was swallowed up by the crowd, just one more woman of indeterminate age and middling height, although somewhat too plump and rosy cheeked for the role they'd decided she should play. Nick stepped into a convenient doorway to let the traffic in the street stream past. The smell of rising bread made his mouth water but he ignored his hunger. When the rebels had all pa.s.sed by, he returned to the inn where he had earlier bespoken a room. If Jennet could convince Susanna to leave the countess's household, they would meet there, but he did not hold out much hope she'd agree, not as long as her position as Lady Pendennis was secure.

Involuntarily, Nick's fists clenched. The mere thought of Susanna answering to that name made him angry. Although he believed what he'd told Lady Glenelg, that Pendennis would sacrifice anyone, even Susanna, to defeat the uprising, he also suspected that Pendennis intended to set himself up as Nick's rival once the rebellion had been put down.

Susanna had agreed to help Pendennis for the sake of England. Nick knew that. She derived great satisfaction from righting wrongs. But he feared she also enjoyed venturing into the dangerous waters braved by intelligence gatherers.

Pendennis was cut from the same cloth as Sir Robert Appleton. He could offer her excitement, and additional opportunities to do good. In comparison, life with an ordinary merchant would seem pa.s.sing dull. Furthermore, although Susanna claimed to long for a peaceful existence, she had never yet failed to involve herself in the troubles of those with connections to her late husband.

His thoughts as dark as night in a collier's mine, Nick reached the inn. It was all but deserted, since most of Durham's inhabitants were at the cathedral. When last he'd stayed here, he remembered, he'd been with his father. He'd been a mere apprentice then. In the years since, he'd traveled far and seen much.

That realization stopped Nick in his tracks. If Susanna craved excitement, he could offer her Muscovy. Or, better yet, Persia.

Let Pendennis top that!

A roar of sound-the crowd at the cathedral-brought him back to the present with a crash. Yes, he could offer Susanna a whole wide world, but first they had to get out of Yorkshire in one piece.

Chapter 20.

Her heart had stumbled at the sight of him. As she sat through ma.s.s, Susanna was still reeling from the shock of seeing Nick in Durham. Her mind was filled with as much chaos as the street outside.

It seemed impossible. He was supposed to be in Hamburg.

She had only seen him for an instant, and yet, in that suspended moment, she'd absorbed every detail of his beloved face and form. The strands of white in the darker shades of his hair. The velvet brown of his eyes. The broad shoulders that revealed his great physical strength. She'd even noticed that he wore a good black riding coat, fringed, and thick knitted riding stockings pulled up over his boots in the fashionable way that also protected them from the dust and dirt of the road.

And Jennet. It was Jennet's added presence that had made her doubt the evidence before her eyes. Jennet should have been hundreds of miles to the south, in Kent. Why was she here and dressed in plain fustian and in Nick's company when neither of them could abide the other?

A poke in the ribs from Joan Lascelles reminded Susanna to kneel.

Walter had taught her how to use a rosary during the voyage from Hamburg and she no longer felt awkward toying with the beads. She'd been surprised by how easily she'd also become accustomed to hearing Ma.s.s and by how little the Catholic church service differed from the English liturgy set out in the Book of Common Prayer. Certes, the priests spoke Latin, although most had pa.s.sing poor p.r.o.nunciation, and wore more elaborate vestments, but aside from that, and the use of such embellishments as a censer and holy water and music, the content was much the same.

Hearing Ma.s.s in the North meant choirs and cornets and sackbuts, too. Susanna quite enjoyed all that. Only an organ remained in Leigh Abbey's parish church, and there had been attempts by some radical reformers to expel it and banish the singing of psalms.

The priest's voice thundered powerfully from the pulpit, preaching against heretics who embraced the New Religion. Susanna. Her family. Her friends. "When Elizabeth Tudor refused to receive the papal nuncio, she became excommunicate and sacrificed the allegiance of her subjects," he declared. "It is not treason to rise up against her." In the rousing sermon that followed this denunciation, he equated loyalty to Queen Elizabeth with certain h.e.l.lfire . . . or at the least excommunication by Pope Pius V.

This was a message popular with the crowd and when, after ma.s.s, the countesses and their ladies adjourned to the safety of the churchyard on the south side of the minster, the earls turned their followers loose. Susanna looked back only once, just in time to see two men tearing pages from the English Bible customarily used from the pulpit. A crash and splintering sound signaled the destruction of the communion table.

"They will light a bonfire," the countess of Westmorland predicted, "to burn the heretic prayer books."

Susanna's stomach turned at the thought of so much waste. Lady Northumberland's bonfire at Topcliffe had been disturbing. This was vile. She glanced at Lady Westmorland with distaste. How could a woman whose girlhood tutor had been John Foxe, that fiery advocate of the New Religion who in later years had written the volume popularly known as the Book of Martyrs, detailing the suffering of those who had been persecuted for their religion under the harsh Catholic regime of Mary Tudor, so easily sanction the desecration of copies of the New Religion's Book of Common Prayer?

What irony, Susanna thought, that Foxe's most outstanding pupil should lead a rebellion designed to return England to Mary's faith. Susanna doubted it was done out of any fervent religious belief on her part, which only made the countess's actions that much more reprehensible. Lady Westmorland was prepared to use religious zeal to further her own ends, the restoration of her husband to the position of power and wealth he'd once held in the North and the advancement of her brother, the duke of Norfolk.

The previous evening at Brancepeth, Lady Westmorland had worked the rebels into a frenzy. It had been Susanna's turn to attend Lady Northumberland, so she'd heard every heated word, observed every volatile reaction.

Tempers had been high on the raised dais throughout the evening meal. Everyone expected that the earl of Suss.e.x would send troops to enforce his summons to York. Brancepeth might be strongly positioned, standing on an outcropping of rock and surrounded by higher hills, but it was not prepared for a siege, and the earls and their countesses could not agree on what to do next. No one wanted to submit to Suss.e.x, or flee the realm, but neither of the earls had appeared to have much enthusiasm for open rebellion. There was no sign yet of Alba's armada. The earl of Northumberland, fearing failure that would leave him in even worse straits, had argued for disbanding at once. He seemed to think he'd be allowed to go home and pretend naught had happened.

At this suggestion, Lady Westmorland had become very red in the face. Standing so quickly that she'd overturned her chair, her voice had risen to a shriek of outrage. "We and our country were shamed forever," she declared, "that now in the end we should seek holes to creep into!"

The earl of Westmorland was a young man, no more than five and twenty, and devoted to his slightly older wife. He had not interrupted her as she'd berated the other conspirators, calling them cowards and worse. At one point, in sheer frustration, she'd burst into tears.

It had been a remarkable performance. Even Lady Northumberland had fallen silent before it. Calming herself, Lady Westmorland had spoken quietly to her husband, then briefly left the hall. When she returned, Westmorland had stood. He'd raised one fist and shouted, "A fight to the death!"