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СКАЧАТЬ kept shaking his head.

      ‘You’re a fool! But not wicked enough.’ I eased back another step. ‘They sent the wrong man. I swear I won’t betray you. Save yourself, if you can.’

      I watched his eyes as I watch those of a new hound to see whether it means to lick my hand or bite. ‘Whatever you and your friends are plotting, you must stop it, so I can try to save myself.’ I saw struggle in his blue eyes. ‘Neither of us wants to be here.’

      ‘No,’ he whispered.

      ‘Then we must simply agree that we’re not here and never were. If I don’t betray you, what crime will you have committed?’ I held my breath.

      ‘You’re scarce more than a child and don’t understand men’s affairs.’ Then he went still, in that moment-of-just-before. Just before a dog is unleashed. Just before a bow-man releases his bolt or the dangling pig’s throat is cut. I had seen men gather themselves up like that before, when they had to do something unpleasant.

      ‘You must come with me,’ he said. ‘Please don’t make me hurt you.’

      I had lost him.

      But I wouldn’t die on the scaffold like my grandmother! Because that was how I would end, if I let him take me to these ‘friends’. Better to die now, with only a short time for fear. Struggling, perhaps not even noticing the fatal blow. Better that than to wait blindfolded for the first blow of the axe, and the second and the third. Better that my Belle not creep whimpering out from under my skirts, like my grandmother’s little dog, covered with my blood, to sniff at my severed head.

      ‘I won’t come!’

      He shook his head, avoiding my eyes.

      I tightened my grip on my dirk.

      ‘I can’t be queen if I’m dead.’

      ‘I swear that I won’t kill you.’

      ‘But I will.’

      He stepped towards me.

      I placed the tip of the dirk in the hollow at the base of my throat. I felt the point prick my skin. I took another step back.

      Don’t think! Don’t think! Be ready to push…twist…Just do it!

      ‘It’s harder than you imagine,’ he said. But I had made him uncertain again.

      I hopped back another step. He started to follow.

      ‘Don’t misjudge my age or sex! I’m not a child, whatever you may think.’ The young she-wolf looked him in the eyes. ‘And I’m not one of your delicate English ladies, neither. I’m a Scottish barbarian. I cut the shoulder of a stag when I was seven.’ I hobbled another step. The she-wolf still knew that I would use the dirk. My eyes told him so.

      And another step.

      He wavered, sword half-raised.

      ‘God speed you!’ I turned my back with the knife still at my throat.

      Breathe in. Hop. Breathe in. Hop.

      The courage-wolf inside me gobbled up the pain.

      Breathe in. Hop.

      I listened for his footsteps over the sound of my own breathing.

      Around a bend in the track, then past a hazel clump. I began to hope. Unreasonably, that fragile physical barrier between us made me feel safer.

      Breathe in. Hop. And again. And again.

      Suddenly, the pain returned. I stopped, dizzy with pain. I looked back. Through the screen of brown hazel leaves, I could see him only in parts. He sat on his heels in the middle of the track, rocking, with his head in his hands.

      Get out of England! I urged him silently. As far away from me as possible!

      ‘Robin,’ he had said, ‘a band of armed men.’

      There were others, but how many? And what were they doing at this very moment? What did they intend? Oh, God! I begged. Please let Henry be unharmed!

      The snake word ‘treason’ coiled around my throat and tightened. I must warn Henry. But how, without entangling myself in treason?

      A fine deep tremor began in the bones of my legs. I leaned my hand on a beech trunk. My heart felt smothered, as if it didn’t have room to beat. I tugged at my stomacher and bodice again. Distractedly, I picked broken twigs and leaves from my skirt and sleeves. The smell of fear rose from under my arms. I felt small and empty. My wolf had left me. I was on my own again.

      I hobbled on. Now I had to return to my attendants and try to lie.

      Trey raced up covered with mud and bits of dead leaf from rolling on the ground. Then he galloped ahead and back again, reproaching me for my slowness.

      I had been such a fool!

      If only our thoughts could leap across distances.

       Take care, beloved brother. Take care! I don’t know where you are. I don’t even know what I must warn you about.

       ‘You don’t understand men’s affairs,’ my would-be kidnapper had said. Please, God, let someone tell me what is happening.

      Henry and I had been kept apart from birth, he at Stirling Castle under the rod of Lord Mar, I at Dunfermline and Linlithgow with Lady Kildare. But when we met at Holyrood before coming south to England, we had recognised each other as true kin in our first shy glance. Henry, who would one day be king, would know what I should do next.

       Are you still alive?

      It did not seem possible that Combe would still be standing when we got back.

      On the riverbank, the grooms were asleep on the grass. Lady Anne Dudley Sutton, a niece chosen by my guardian to be my chief companion, was making a necklace of plaited grass.

      ‘What has happened to you?’ cried one of the two older ladies with the beginning of alarm.

      ‘Twisted my ankle,’ I said. ‘Slipped from a fallen log.’ Only half a lie.

      The ladies clicked their tongues over my ankle and promised a poultice. They exchanged amused glances while they re-pinned my sleeves and skirt without further questions. This time, at least, past misbehaviour worked in my favour.

      To my relief both my guardian and his wife were away when we returned to Combe and would not return that night. But I had to let Mrs Hay resume her former role as my nurse, and order my fire built higher and fuss over my ankle with cool cloths and ointments. I agreed to eat my supper propped up on pillows in my big canopied bed. I stroked the four upright carved oak lions that held up the canopy and protected me from bad dreams. But tonight they stared past me with blank, denying eyes.

      There was no help for it, I decided as I tried to force down some pigeon pie. I must risk implicating myself with guilty knowledge and warn Henry. If any harm came to him that might have been avoided, СКАЧАТЬ