I nodded and touched the corner of my mouth. Blood dotted my fingertips.
Jean sheathed his boot knife. “Where there is one, there is a hundred. We must make haste, my love.”
I took my husband’s outstretched hand and let him pull me from our honeymoon chamber. I tried not to look at the Englishman’s face as I stepped over his lifeless body and back out into the thin gray dawn. The other guardsman lay in a crumpled heap at the water’s edge, his red tunic made redder still by the pool of scarlet which grew beneath him.
The ferryman stood on the wooden boat, waiting. Hounds bayed in the distance. Something inside me flicked and, in that instant, and I knew that I was forever changed.
They’re coming.
Grasping the tunic of the man near the water, I strained against his weight and tried to drag him to the ferry. “We can dump them in the deep waters of the channel.”
“Darling,” Jean’s hand was light on my shoulder. “Let me.” Jean grasped the dead guardsman and hefted him easily into our waterfall oasis. “We cannot link these men to our ferryman. Or they will kill him, too.”
I glanced over to the man who was ready to carry us to freedom. He was feverishly kicking dirt over the pool of scarlet left by the King’s man. When he was satisfied, he humphed a triumphant sound. Then, scurrying about like a rodent, he grasped the reins of the two white horses and led them onto the wooden boat. His voice trembled in dawn’s early light. “If I am to take you across the channel to Calais, you must board. Now.”
†††
The wooden boat creaked as the ferryman ran it onto French soil. “Thank you God,” he murmured. A sheen of sweat glistened across his forehead in the midday rays.
“I believe he is more relieved than the pair of us.” Jean’s voice was a whisper across my skin.
“The pair of horses had been most nervous, I would say.” Relief washed over me like the frothy sea over the rocks. The King of England’s men and their bloodthirsty dogs sat safely on the far side of the sea. Their snapping barks had haunted me for miles into the open water.
Thank God I didn’t have to swim.
Jean stood and pulled the ferryman to his wobbly feet. “Tell me sir, I heard tale there are peace talks in Calais with English envoys. Am I right?”
The ferryman nodded. He wrung his hat in his trembling hands at his middle.
“Splendid. Now you must take us to him.”
The ferryman’s mouth closed and opened, as though he was on the brink of a fit. “To, whom m’lord? You cannot mean to His Majesty—”
“Yes.” Jean interrupted his blubbering and produced the jingling pouch of crowns from Father Gabriel. “Do be so kind as to lend us your horses and your time. Take us to Francis, my good man. Take us to the King of France.”
It’s Time
Calais, France
T
he castle loomed before us, ancient architecture upon ancient soil built upon hope. My hope.
I smoothed at my wild locks, acutely aware that I was entirely unfit to go before a king, even a French king. “I’d say this is fortuitous, King Francis just happening to be in Calais when we seek his assistance, again in Calais.”
Nerves rattled my words, but still they kept coming. “Never until this moment have I set eyes on French soil. It looks rather, well, English.”
Jean turned to me and tucked a lock of unruly hair behind my ear. The sound of the white horses’ hooves galloping down the rocky road, away from us, gave me pause.
“But our horses—” I protested.
Jean’s hand found mine. His palm was not the least bit sweaty, in stark contrast to mine. “Darling,” he began in shushed tones. “They are our horses no longer. Our Ferryman earned them and more. From here, you and I must walk. For should we wander to the castle on such fine steeds such as those, Francis’s men will no doubt watch us with even a warier eye.”
I followed his pointed glance down at our pitiable clothing. Jean spoke the truth. While his own garments didn’t need mending, they could certainly use a good wash. The blue silk gown I’d worn at Henry’s palace and on my mad dash through the Royal Forest was a complete disgrace. Ripped here and there, I would be better to wear servant’s rags than this royal disaster.
“It will be difficult enough to gain an audience with Francis,” Jean continued, “without giving them more reason to think us suspicious, especially since neither of us carry letters of recommendation from King Henry. Should we be successful and gain an audience...”
His words trailed off to the tune of crashing waves.
“And if we are not?”
The coastal air was thick with salt and added heavy volume to my unbrushed mane. I batted it with my free hand, careful not to loosen my fingers from Jean’s grip with the other. He offered yet another grim smile.
Flashes of Dudley’s nubby-toothed grin and the promise of his torture chamber gave me pause. The hunger in his broken voice gnawed at my soul. When he spoke of having time with me alone upon my return, before my execution, he became a starving dog. Only through my torture would his hunger be satisfied. The gruesome nature of King Henry’s chamber was known across the land and was not simply limited to the rack or the gallows.
When Mark Smeaton, the musician among the many men accused of adultery with the late Queen Anne Boleyn was examined, it was widely whispered that a knotted rope was tightened about his head in such a manner that he emerged blinded for the remainder of his short, sad life. And that wasn’t even in the infamous chamber.
It seems every instrument that could be used to inflict pain was rumored to be present in his dungeon. I shivered and gripped Jean’s hand tighter. Surely the French Court had an equally ravenous torturer.
“Let’s not dwell on such matters.”
I began to speak, but the words strangled in my throat. I was glad of it, since fear would have broken them into unrecognizable syllables anyway.
Jean brushed my cheek with his thumb. “Fret not, Wife. I will die before I’ll let any harm come to you.”
Carefully, we made our way up the rocky path to the castle that may well be our ultimate undoing—or our earthly salvation.
A pair of King Francis’s men stepped before us as we neared the castle gate. “Arret!”
