The Queen's Exiles by Barbara Kyle Page B

helped Jane through her grief. Frances felt like a widow herself, cut off as she was from Adam. Forever. His hatred for her was a kind of death. But that pain did not bear dwelling on. It was Jane who was her mainstay now. Frances owed her so much. God knows what she and the children would have done without Jane’s help. Though an exile, Frances was living very well as Jane’s guest.
    “I am nervous, it’s true, but eager,” she said. “I know the governor will listen to you, his old friend.”
    “More likely to you, my dear,” Jane said, “when I tell him of your bravery in the uprising and how you almost succeeded.”
    Yet failed, Frances thought grimly. She still felt scarred by that debacle. Worse, she hadn’t been brave at all, had only done what her brother had told her to do, making her house in Chelsea available for the attempt on Queen Elizabeth’s life. In the end they’d blown up the house but not Elizabeth. Terrified of arrest, Frances had snatched the children and fled. “Anne came nearer success,” she said. “I so admire her.” Anne, Countess of Northumberland, was another stalwart among their group. Brussels was home to many English Catholic exiles, from nobles and gentlemen and priests to merchants and traders and seminary students. Frances and Jane had come to Brussels expressly to confer with them. “How she has suffered,” Frances murmured.
    The Northern Uprising, people had called it. Anne’s husband, Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had led it. In Spain Frances had followed the clandestine reports of Northumberland gathering an army of discontented northerners and she had prayed that he would march on London and overthrow the heretic Elizabeth. But that she-devil had more lives than a cat. Her army routed Northumberland’s forces before they got farther south than York. Northumberland fled to Scotland, and his wife, Anne, escaped to the Netherlands. Northumberland took refuge with a Scottish border raider. But the vile Scot sold his noble guest to the Earl of Moray. Anne tried to raise enough money to ransom her husband from Moray, persuading King Philip and even the pope to contribute to her cause. All in vain. Elizabeth outbid her! Took charge of Northumberland and executed him. And then, to demonstrate her total power, she executed his chief supporter, the Duke of Norfolk, the foremost peer of the realm. Frances still seethed with indignation. Spain could not move fast enough to bring down Elizabeth.
    A hand touched her shoulder, startling her. She turned to see the swarthy man who had been watching her across the room. He wore the well-tailored but sober clothes of a merchant’s agent or a gentleman’s steward. Crinkly black hair and a chin shadowed with black stubble. The bloodshot whites of his eyes were spidered with red.
    He bowed to Jane. “Pardon, Your Grace.” Then said to Frances, without bowing, “A word with you, my lady, if you would be so kind.”
    He spoke English with an Irish accent, and there was a forwardness about him that raised Frances’s hackles. The kind of Irish upstart who did not know his place. “What do you want?” she said.
    “It’s about what you will want, my lady. News.” He leaned in to speak in her ear, and she grimaced at the sour smell of beer on his breath. He whispered, “About your husband.”
    A chill touched her scalp. Adam .
    He gestured toward an alcove where they could speak in some privacy. Frances said, as calmly as she could, “As you wish,” and told Jane she would return in a moment.
    “Who are you?” she demanded the moment she was alone with the man.
    “Leonard Tyrone, at your service, my lady.”
    “I need no service. How do you know my husband?”
    His half smile showed brown teeth. “I work for him.”
    A jolt of terror. He’s come to drag me back to hang. No, she thought, willing her frightened heartbeat to settle. If that were Tyrone’s mission he would have grabbed her in the dark of night or on a