She locked the lass Ella in the queen's chambers and then skipped down the hallway to the door of a room used by Prince James, and she let herself in with her master key. She walked towards the curtained bed and called "Danny," in a hushed voice, half expecting some other officer to answer. There was a grunt from the corner of the room and she pointed the reflector of her candle lantern that way. "Danny, my dear, why aren't you in the bed? You need your sleep."
"I was in the bed but the bloody thing is too short. None of these Stuart men must be even as tall as you. This corner is out of the draught so I pulled the bedding over here."
"Oh you silly. I give you the room of a prince and you still sleep on the floor like a deck hand." As she said this she walked carefully towards him. The carpet in front of the bedding was an obstacle course of weapons all laid out to be found easily in the dark. He lifted his down comforter and she crawled under it with him, fully clothed. "I just stopped a young maid from visiting your bed. I hope you don't mind."
"No I don't ... Ahhh," he hissed and squirmed, "you are like ice. Why don't you wrap yourself in a cloak if you are cold?"
"A comely lass puts up with a lot of chills to make a good impression. Ummm, you are so warm. Here let me put my hands between your thighs to warm them up."
"That's supposed to be my line," he laughed softly. "Oooh. I don't mind if you stopped another lass, so long as you stay."
"You know I can't. Robert is sleeping now, but eventually he will wake up cold and reach for me. I only came to tell you..."
"Thank you," he interrupted. "No need. I owed it to your mother to make sure that you reached Windsor safely."
She cursed him under her breath for mentioning his wife while they were so cozy together in each others arms. "I came to tell you that you must leave this place, tomorrow. Go back to London, or go home, but stay far away from the Riches and the Hampdens and the rest of the Providence Company directors. They will get you killed."
"But tomorrow I was going to ask Robert Rich to put his promise in writing that I can claim the governorship of Bermuda on my arrival there, because I can have it witnessed by John Hampden."
"Fool, they will eagerly renew their promise, yet will sign nothing. You are so thick. Even village girls like me know that fine gentlemen may promise you many things to have their way with you, and will keep promising them so long as you please them, but in the end they break those promises and move on to the next village girl."
"But you were given a London townhouse," he interrupted.
"I was given the use of a townhouse, rent free, yes, but only the promise of the title. It will be the same with you and the governorship."
"So if you are so smart why do you continue on with Rich, my pretty village girl?"
"Because I live very well and risk very little. All I need do is put up with an old man pawing me and showing me off, whereas you risk your very life over and over again. You've saved the freedom, nay, the lives of all of the directors of the Providence Company at least once. You've run blockades in your ships. Two days ago you were towing powder barges. Is there any task you can name that is more stupidly dangerous than towing a powder barge. They will continue to promise you the governorship, and you will continue to ride off and risk your life hoping that when you return, if your return, the charter will be signed and waiting for you. Grow up, you fool. They are using you."
"As I am using them," he argued weakly.
"In times of war the strong prey on the weak, but in times of peace the rich prey on the poor," she quoted.
"Since when have you been studying history, or is that philosophy?" he asked solemnly, while he thought about how dangling promises in front of him was like him dangling carrots in front of a donkey.
"Countess Susanna is a student of history. When she spouts about what she has recently pieced together, she spouts it to me. I listen patiently, and remember some of it. But that is beside the point. Our own village Seer talks about it in terms of the warm times and the cold times. The warm times of peace are behind us, and ahead of us lie the cold times of war. The men who became rich in the warm times..."
"Like Robert Rich and his forefathers?"
"Yes, now they must use their wealth to become strong. You were poor in the warm times, and now you are weak."
"If I am so weak why do they depend so much on me?" He said through a yawn as he pulled her closer to him.
"You are weak because you are willingly bought. First with the profits from the gun running, and now with the promise of the governorship. You must leave this place. Can't you see that they need pistoleer skirmishers like you more than ever. They need to send scouting parties out on dangerous mission to find out what Charlie and Rupert are doing, and to harry them with ambushes and surprise attacks. They need you, but you don't need them. They will send you out on dangerous missions again and again if you let them, until one day I will be forced to wear black for a year."
"Mmm"
"Are you listening to me?" she asked. He had slipped lower under the covers so that he could press his eyes into her breasts. His body had gone limp and his breathing was soft and steady. "Don't you understand?" He didn't stir. "I love you Daniel Vanderus and I don't want to lose you," she whispered, and then she kissed him and eased herself out of his softened grasp and out of his bed. The cold of the air in the room was a shock. She grabbed up a spare linen sheet off a hassock and swung it around her shoulders and silk gown like a cloak and went back to her own room, the queen's chamber.
Ella was sleeping soundly behind the curtains of the queen's bed, so she tiptoed passed the great old canopied bed to reach the connecting door to the king's chambers. Once in that room she shrugged off all that she was wearing and snuggled under the covers next to Robert. Robert was old, yes, but when he slept he barely moved so she could sleep soundly at his side.
Hours later she woke to something poking at her thighs. Robert may have been old, but most mornings his last dream of his sleep gave him a morning wood. She gently pushed it away from her and moved further away in the bed, but she couldn't find sleep again for her mind was already stirring and fretting about her many new duties. The pre-dawn light had begun, so she decided to rise, relieve herself, make sure her new kitchen staff were stirring. Once that was done she would come back to bed to do the wifely duty of milking Robert's morning wood to save the maids from being pestered by him when they came in to make the bed.
The chill of the room after the warmth of Rob's bed made her shiver so she picked up her linen sheet again and wrapped it around her. Her first stop must be the queen's chambers where she had lain out some clothes more suitable to running a household and staying warm than the few ounces of silk she had worn at last night's dinner table. The lass Ella was still asleep in the queen's bed so she shook her. She did not stir. Shook her again. Her hand came back sticky. Warm and sticky. She sniffed her hand. Blood. Two fingers behind Ella's ear told her that the poor thing's heart had stopped beating. The blood was from a wound above her heart. Murder then.
Britta clutched the sheet tighter to her and quietly backed away from the girl, away from the bed, towards the door to the hallway. As silently as she could she unlocked the door, and then she stood to one side. Was the murderer still in the room? She no longer wanted to be alone in this room, so she screamed and then SCREAMED again. Not more than seconds later, heavy bodies hit the door. The fools hadn't even tried the door handle. "It's not locked," she called out, "use the handle." Two bodies, two men's bodies, tumbled through it.
Before she could explain anything two more bodies tumbled through the connecting door to the king's chamber, Robert's chamber. Two of his lifeguards ... one of whom carried a candle lantern. The others of Robert's personal guard would be have surrounded his bed to protect. Their foremost duty was to protect their earl, not to investigate the screams of women.
"There is a dead maid in the queen's bed," Britta told the men. "She has been stabbed. The murderer must still be in this room, somewhere." There was a flint spark near the hall door as a candle was lit, and then another. As their flames glowed to life she saw that Daniel was holding one candle above his head, partially so that he could see into the dark corners, but mostly so the earl's lifeguard could see and recognize both he and John Hampden.
It was with a feeling of complete relief that Britta recognized Daniel and she moved closer to him and stood behind him and sucked back some sobs before saying, "I came in from Robert's room and found her body. She slept in that bed all night, and her body is still warm." There was a pause while she sobbed again. "The hall door was still locked so I unlocked it and screamed. There is no other way out of this room but the two doors, so the killer must still be in here." Her eyes were darting everywhere. "Behind the furniture, or in one of the wardrobes, or perhaps under the bed."
More candles were lit and a quick search was made by the four men, each holding a candle in one hand and a pistol in the other. Britta now also had a pistol. It was Daniel's wheel-lock pocket pistol that he had put down so he could light a candle. It was cold and heavy in her hand. How could something so small be so heavy. How could something so beautifully crafted be for a use so ugly. She let it hang like a lead weight on the end of her right arm with the dangerous end pointing at the floor.
"There is no one in this room but us," one of the guards said. "Ma'am, you were the only here in a locked room with the murdered girl. I'm afraid we will have to hold you for questioning."
"Don't act the fool," Hampden told the man dismissively. "These old palaces have hidden passages and spy holes. The killer has used one of them. All of you keep quiet and listen, while I think." A moment later he said, "For a half dozen reigns this has been the queen's room, yet there is only one connecting door, the one to the king's chamber. Henrietta had what, eight babies by Charlie? Surely she would demand a connecting door to the nursery. All of you, look for a hidden door."
"The nursery room is behind that wall," Britta pointed, and the two lifeguards began tapping on that wall and listening for any hollow sounds. There was a sound from the wall, as if someone had fallen against it from the other side.
"Bugger this," Hampden said and ran into the hallway to go around to the nursery in hopes of cutting off the killer's escape. Daniel was on his heels. A half a moment later the two lifeguards followed them at the run, leaving Britta once again alone in the room with the dead girl, and dressed in nothing but a linen sheet. At least they had left her a lit candle. She heard something click and she turned to stare into the shadows towards the sound. A man leaped towards her from what should have been a bookcase.
"No, it can't be," a man's shaky voice muttered as he skidded to a stop just short of her. "I killed you. Are you a ghost?" He was reaching forward with a bloody dagger towards the apparition in white. There was a grind, a flash, a bang and a lot of smoke, and then a crash as the stranger fell across a small table and crushed it into the floor.
"Don't shoot, it's John," a voice came from the bookcase-door, and Hampden ran into the room and pointed his own pocket pistol at the writhing man on the floor. When he glanced up at Britta, the vision of her took his breath away. She was a goddess from some ancient legend with her comely face and her bedroom hair cascading over her shoulders. While her left side was draped in a linen sheet, the sheet had fallen away from her right side as she had raised her pistol. Her leg was long, her skin was golden, her breast was full and high, and her still gun was held straight up above her head in her right hand to keep its smoke out of her eyes.
"Get out of my way," the unmistakable voice of the earl came from the connecting doorway as he pushed and scrambled through it despite the hands of his own guards pulling him back. "Oh my wondrous girl," he told Britta as he hurried across the room to hold her and pull her sheet back up to cover her one bared breast. "I will commission an Italian to sculpt you in that pose. What hey John. Was that not a pose you will remember all your life? What would you call such a statue?"
Hampden was still staring at her unblinking. "Liberty," he said softly.
"What of her victim?" Robert asked. "The scoundrel still lives, and is obviously in pain." He looked towards the two guards who had tried to hold him away from the danger and told them, "Take him away for questioning. I want him to tell us what he was doing, who ordered him to do it, and who his accomplices were. Then hang him."
"Hold," Hampden ordered, pointing to the guards. "Robert, stop acting like the king. You are sleeping in his bed, not replacing him. Our arguements with him have always been about his thinking that he is above the rule of law, and now you are ready to flaunt it as badly as ever he did. This man will be tried and sentenced by a jury of twelve of his peers. In his case that means twelve from this, the king's household."
"There ... there aren't twelve men left," Britta spoke out with a shaky voice. "Most of them went in the carriages to Oatlands."
"Then a mix of men and women will do," Hampden told her gently, and for a moment he lost himself in her eyes.
"Women ... on a jury?" Robert asked and then snickered.
"Why not?" Britta scolded. "His victim was a woman." She looked over at Daniel who was now kneeling beside the man she had shot. "Will his wound kill him?. Turn him over so I can see who he is."
Daniel cradled the man's head and then very gently and carefully rolled him over. The man groaned in agony. "A gut wound," Daniel told her, "so he'll probably die of lockjaw fever within the week." He very gently adjusted the mans arms to keep him on his side so the blood in his mouth could drain without choking him.
The pain of the movement brought the man back to his senses and he stared up at Britta through half seeing eyes. "But you were dead. I killed you," he gasped.
"You killed Ella, one the queen's seamstresses." Britta told him, and then to the others, "I know this man. He keeps the wine cellar, which means he has a master key. The medicines, such as the monk's hood, would be stored in the cool of his cellar."
"Serves Ella right," the man moaned. "It was sacrilege for her to be sleeping in her majesties bed."
"But it was me you were trying to kill?" Britta asked. "Why? I am a nobody. Why me?"
"Rup ... Prince Rupert ... cough ... ordered it. I don't know why."
"Because you refused him," Hampden told her. "You refused him, and shamed him, and carved up his best friend, Manfred. To a German prince any of these would be a sin against him which would demand vengeance."
"And John should know," Daniel interrupted, "since Rupert is seeking vengeance against him as well, and for similar reasons."
"You are shaking, dear," Robert told her. "Come, I will take you away from this gore, and put you to bed in my room."
She spun out of the earls arms so that she could grab up her clothes. To do so she either had to put the pistol down, or lose her grip that was keeping the sheet closed and decent. She laid the pistol down on the bench where her clothes were laid out, and then she looked from her clothes, to the pistol, and back again. "The sun is almost up," she told the men, "I have things I must do ... my dooties." She shrugged and let her sheet fall open for a moment while she gathered up her clothes and the pistol and then danced towards the king's chamber to get dressed. "Danny, I am borrowing your pocket pistol. Is there a kit that goes with it?"
Daniel nodded to her, and then she was gone from the room. Without her beauty to stare at, the men stared at each other, and then were embarrassed by this and tried not to stare at each other. Daniel kicked at the bloody dagger on the floor and told them, "If she had been holding any kind of pistol other than a friction wheel-lock, she would be dead by now. It doesn't need cocking. All she had to do was point the thing and keep pulling on the trigger until the wheel sparked the flash powder.
"I have one just like it," Robert told him. "I'll give it to her in place of yours."
"Best give yours to me," Daniel replied. "She'll not be letting my little pistol go, not now, not ever. It didn't let her down. When all of us big strong men had let her down by leaving her undefended while we ran around to the nursery, it didn't let her down."
"If you do commission a sculpture," Hampden said, "commission it in white marble and larger than life, and have it stood at the entrance to the House of Lords at Westminster. Liberty is after all, a young woman, and the lords ignore that fact to their peril."
* * * * *
In the early afternoon Daniel searched for Britta and found her standing alone on the eastern wall looking out over the river and the flats of farm fields far below. So that she would know it was a friend coming up behind her, he softly hummed a tune that all their clan learned when they were children . She was not wearing a cloak despite the brisk breeze along the wall, so he pressed in behind her and wrapped his arms and his own cloak around her. There was a heavy lump in her apron pocket ... his pistol. She relaxed back wards against him, seeking his warmth. Her cheeks were damp from tears.
"What are you staring at?" he asked softly into her ear.
"All the towers. Every village has a church tower and every city a cathedral tower so I have been counting them. From here you can see them all the way to London, and all around it. There are so many of them, and for each one so many people, and all of their houses and animals. Such wealth, such bounty, and yet I was born in a mud hut on a fens island. What am I doing here? How dare I sleep in a queen's room?"
"You're just feeling low," he told her softly. "Killing your first man will do that. Look how it changed your sister Teesa. It will be the same with you."
"It's not the same at all," she said impatiently. "Whether Teesa admitted it to herself or not, she has always been a healer, deeply touched by the feelings of others. Of course killing a man would shock her into changing her ways. I don't have the 'touch' as she does, or her extra senses. All I have is my beauty."
Daniel disagreed with her, but not aloud. This was not the time. If he mentioned the magic calmness he felt whenever she pressed her breasts into his eyes, she would likely slap his face. "Your beauty has taken you from a mud hut to the bed of a queen.?"
"I've ordered the bed burned. And don't you lecture me too. I don't care if every queen since Eleanor has born princes in it, for it is an evil thing if it causes young girls to be murdered in their sleep." She took a deep breath to calm herself. His warmth was seeping through her clothes and was being welcomed by her skin. "So is the trial finished now?"
"He pleaded guilty so that he could not be questioned under oath, and your staff were unanimous on the death sentence ... likely hoping for a quick execution to save him from the excruciating pain of lock jaw. It will not save him the pain though. Robert has delayed the execution pending questioning." He felt her stiffen in his arms. "No, do not interfere. It was as much an attack on Robert as on you. Let him handle it."
"My beauty has always attracted men to my side so I am well used to other women despising me for my looks. That Rupert despises me enough to order my death, well, that has shaken me."
"Luckily men like Rupert are rare in this world. They seem to see the world and everything in it as a convenience put there to please them. They love or they hate, and are loved or are hated. If you do not cheer them and think them wonderful, then they view you as a deadly enemy. An opportunity to punish a slight is always taken, no matter how evil the punishment ... and afterwards they feel no guilt at doing evil. Don't try to understand Rupert ... just keep well away from him."
"But if he is so evil, surely all those around him must know it. Why would anyone befriend him or follow him or grant him honours?"
"A viper looks like a viper and moves like a viper so you know to kill it immediately. Not so with these vipers that walk like men. They are always in disguise like players on a stage. They play a role so well that they fool all those around them. When they play the lover they seduce women."
"No women can be seduced," she argued, "not really. A man can buy them, or force them, or trick them but none of that is seduction, not really."
"Men like Rupert can seduce women, and men, and bankers, and armies, and kings. They are natural players. They take on a role and they are that role, and completely believable in it."
"Then I was right," she said stubbornly. "They use trickery, so it is not seduction."
"I meant seduction beyond the sexual act, and you well know it. Mental seduction, emotional seduction, ... umm... creating trust by lying convincingly." He punctuated the last phrase by banging his fist down on the top of the stone wall in front of them.
"I understand. Really I do," she whispered to him. "And I understand how these walking vipers effect you, Daniel Vanderus. I have listened to your adventure stories for years. Mostly you try so hard not to maim and not to kill, and yet in a very few of your stories you kill immediately. No warning, no wounding, no capture ... just a swift death. In those ones, they were all men like Rupert, weren't they? Walking vipers?"
"Exactly. They cannot help what they are, any more than a viper can, but what they are puts all around them in danger. Yes, I admit it. I admit to murdering men like Rupert. I even admit to seeking vengeance against them by making them die slowly and painfully. And I admit that this is wrong of me. I keep telling myself that if I am forced to kill, that it should be as swift and as painless as possible, but sometimes the evil they have wrought just ..."
"Like what Rupert did to the folk in Brentford?" she pointed out.
"Aye, exactly. Why should Rupert not suffer as much as all of those good folk suffered because of him?"
"But Jesus says..."
"So are you becoming a Christian now, then? Is that also the Countess Susanna's doing?"
"If the lesson is wise, what does it matter who the teacher is? But no. As a free thinking woman I could never become a Christian. When Susanna invites me to church on Sundays, I always have one of my headaches. I detest seeing churches filled with women being preached at by some over pious man, while their own men are filling the alehouse. The women leave the church overflowing with piousness and go home to their men overflowing with strong ale, and no good ever comes of it."
They stood in silence a long while, staring out along the Thames and at the darkening clouds moving in from the south. "I'm going to stay on a while in Windsor, love," he told her, "just in case you want to leave and need an escort."
She didn't argue no matter how weak his reasoning was. If she wanted to leave, Robert would send her to London in a carriage with an entire platoon as an escort. Daniel was staying on for his own reasons, not the least of which was a chance to avenge Brentford by killing a viper.
Later, after hostessing the evening meal for the officers, she used her master key to visit the wine cellars. As she had expected, there were spices and medicines stored in the cool vaults, a lot of them. Some of them exotic and expensive. After a brief search, she found what she was looking for and took some greenery from a large stoppered jar.
Her next visit needed the help of a guard, for her master keys were of no use in the garrison lockup. The guard showed her to the airless cell where the man she had shot was laying and writhing on a hard palate bed. She waved the guard away, but he wouldn't leave her alone with the man who had openly admitted to trying to assassinate her.
There was a three legged stool in the cell and she pushed it towards the pallet and sat close enough to the injured man to speak softly so the guard would not hear. "Anyone who knows the dangers of monk's hood will know the uses of yew needles, the soldier's friend. I have brought you some." Chewing yew would give him an easy death.
"Thank you," the man said as he forced himself to stop writhing, "but first I would know the cost of such mercy." His words were smoothly said, despite his anguish. "I suppose you were sent by the earl to trick me into naming the messenger who brought the order from the prince."
"No, he does not know I am here. I came only to give you the yew. I have put them under your blanket out of sight. I will go now and keep the guard away from you for a few minutes so you have a chance to chew them. God's peace." She shifted positions so she could rise.
"Wait," he sobbed but did not reach a hand to stay her for that would have caused a violent reaction from the guard. "I tried to do what I was ordered to do, but I failed. The order to sicken all the officers was logical. If my next order had been to assassinate the earl, that also would have been logical. But why you? I am glad that I failed but that won't save me from the fires of hell. I am truly sorry about Ella. She was a Catholic you know, as am I, and she died un-shriven. Do you think she would forgive me?"
"Ask her yourself, after you eat the yew," she told him and again shifted to stand up. She did not want this man to ask for her forgiveness. She would never forgive him.
"My lady," he called out weakly to stop her from leaving, "one of parliament's emissaries to King Charles is actually Prince Rupert's man. One of the Lords. That is all I will tell you. Take care my lady."
When she left the prisoner, she told the guard that she wanted to be shown all of the cells and all of the prisoners. This didn't take long for most of the cells were empty. When parliamentarians first took control of the fortress at Windsor, they had released all of the prisoners that the king had imprisoned there. They were all political prisoners ... pamphleteers or scandal sheet publishers. Now the only prisoners were spies, caught in the act. She had no interest in them, but she had to keep the guards busy until the yew was chewed and swallowed.
On arriving back at the palace, she sought out John Hampden. He was in the library busily writing to the mayors of all of the towns to the south of Windsor. The letters were to explain what Rupert's flying army had done to Brentford, and to urge them to create militias to defend their towns, and to promise those militias munitions and training if they needed it.
"John, which lords are currently your emissaries to the king?" she asked.
"There have been many over the past six months," he replied, "for the king keeps finding fault with them as an excuse to reject them and thereby stall the discussions of peace and power sharing." He pushed his letters away from him for he would much rather keep Britta's company than his scribes'.
"But currently?" she asked.
"Currently. Currently the king has just refused our latest emissaries. It used to be that the king refused them in order to stall the treaty talks because he thought his army had the advantage, but now he is stalling because his army needs time to regroup and re-supply. Luckily Sir John Hippisley has yet to anger the king so at least we still have one of our members at the king's side to keep the treaty dialogue going."
She moved closer to him and put her lips close to his ear so she could speak softly so Hampden's scribes would not hear her words, "I think you should send your scribes away so we can speak privately."
Her breath tickled his ear and was fragrant with clove and cinnamon. The lovely scent of spring flowers rose from her cleavage, perhaps Lily of the Valley. Hampden's plume put an ink smudge across his current page, and his heart began to race. He called to the scribes and asked them to take the messages that were already completed and signed by him, and take them down to the gatehouse to organize their delivery to the four corners of this shire. When the scribes were gone, and the door shut behind them, he rose and invited her to join him on the couch beside the fireplace.
Once she was sat and comfortable he asked if he could sit beside her. She was so splendidly beguiling despite being dressed in a work-a-day woolen dress in black and grey, with a plain hooded cape draped from her shoulders for extra warmth. When she took his hand and pulled him down beside her all he could think about was how warm her hand was, and how smooth it was, and yet how strong it was. Being this close to her, and alone, he noticed again how flawless her skin was. The great beauties of the nobility had porcelain skin which blushed pink, but hers was a tawny golden color, and glowed with health.
"You are staring, John."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, it's just that..." Hampden was cut off.
"I don't mind you savouring my looks, but while you stare we have things to discuss before we are interrupted."
He blinked and turned away from her to regain his senses. "What is this all this about?"
"Do you trust Hippisley?" she asked. "I mean, how much are you dependant on trusting him?"
"I used to trust him," he replied, "until a moment ago." He chanced to look at her again, and again he had to look away to gather his thoughts. "Hippisley was one of Warwick's privateers back in the bad old days when Charlie was young and lost our fleet at Cadiz. For a year or more our coasts were protected by our privateers. That earned Hippisley gratitude enough from his king to be made a member of the royal household. A few years later he inherited his father's estate, and was able to pay off his fines and become a member of the House of Commons."
"Fines? Fines for what?"
"For embezzlement and smuggling," he replied. "Even after he gave up his life on the ships, he still acted like a privateer. What is this all about?"
"I have good reason to believe that it was Hippisley who brought the message from the devil prince which caused the death of my maid."
"Then I will send for him and ask him what messages he carried here from Oatlands."
"It's too late for that," she told him. "He has already left to go back to the king in Outlands."
"How sure are you of this? Does anyone else know?"
"Very sure. The only other person who knew is now dead down in the cells."
"Ahhh, the man who felt Liberty's justice."
"Yes, that man. So what are you going to do about Hippisley?" she asked
He wanted to gaze on her face again, but he daren't. His mind was suddenly overflowing with wickedly sly thoughts about how to use the information about Hippisley and he feared that such thoughts would twist his face and turn it ugly. "I will use him, but without undoing him," he told her while staring into the fire. "This is a civil war, so we have an abundance of spies in this kingdom. Many of them are double spies, because the great families are placating both sides in order to protect their honors and estates. Now that I know that Hippisley is a double spy, I can use him to our advantage."
"How so?" she said as she too stared into the fire. She was beginning to regret ever saying anything.
"I will use him to feed false information to the king. Carefully, of course, so the king will not suspect. It may work only one time, so it must be to achieve something crucial. Meanwhile I will make sure that he learns no more secrets until they no longer secrets." He turned in the seat for now it was absolutely necessary to stare into Britta's eyes for his next words. "You must not speak of this to anyone else, ever. Allow me to tell those who need to know."
She twisted her head slightly but held his gaze when she said, "But Robert ..."
"I will tell Robert, and John Pym, and the others that need to know."
"And Daniel?" she asked, this time turning her eyes and staring into the fire.
"Must never know. You are his step daughter. He would consider it a debt of honor to kill the man."
"Yes, he would kill the man, but for justice not for honor. English courts would never see justice done against such a rich and powerful man for the murder of a nothing maid like Ella, ... but Danny would."
"As flawed as it is, I prefer rule by law to Daniel's vigilantly justice," Hampden told her with a flourish of his hand. "Though there is no man I would rather have standing at my side during a fight, I fear that he is a lawless and godless man, and as much a privateer as Hippisley ever was."
"You are wrong, very wrong about him," she said as she reached out and held his hand with hers, and held his eyes with hers. "He is not lawless, he just lives by the ancient traditional laws of the North Sea rather than by your complicated laws written down to suit wealthy landlords. He is not godless, for he believes in the ancient traditional goddess of the North Sea, rather than your, ... I mean, our Lord God." She immediately regretted saying this to such an important Presbyterian and she squeezed his hand and leaned forward to move her eyes closer to his. "Oh John. I should not have said that. If you do not breathe a word of that to anyone, then I will tell no one of Hippisley, not even Danny."
Her nearness, the intensity of her eyes, the fragrance of flowers and spices, they all had his heart pounding. What had she said? He couldn't remember. He agreed by nodding ever so slightly for he could not trust himself to speak, did not want to break the moment for mere words. He had to remind himself to breathe.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Pistoleer - Brentford by Skye Smith Copyright 2014