Free The Traitor's Daughter by Barbara Kyle Page B

sincere. Now, she thought with some discomfort, I’ll have to dissemble. She decided that from her grandmother’s house she would write Marie a note saying she would love to call and see the baby. But the real object of her visit would be the ambassador.
    She was about to turn down the lane to the Old Swan Stairs when a commotion to the west made her stop. Near the mouth of London Bridge people were running toward the bridge. She heard shouting. A blue-smocked apprentice bolted out of a doorway across from her, caught her eye, then hurried toward the uproar.
    â€œWhat’s happening?” she called after him.
    He didn’t stop, just called over his shoulder, “The villain who tried to kill the Queen! He’s running for Southwark!”
    Kate’s heart jumped. Could they catch the man? If he reached the other side of the bridge he might lose his pursuers among Southwark’s warren of alehouse lanes and alleys. A new energy surged through her. This gunman must not escape! If he was part of a cabal his information could be crucial. She found herself running toward the crowd.
    When she reached the bridge its entrance was crammed with shouting people. Beyond their backs and heads she saw several horsemen armed with swords holding the crowd back. Halfway across the bridge a half-dozen more horsemen had taken up positions to block the way to Southwark. Between the two groups of mounted men the bridge had been cleared of foot traffic except for a lone young man. Slight, fair haired, well dressed, he stood half-crouched, panting, eyeing his pursuers with a wild look like a hunted animal. He brandished a pistol. Kate took in all this even as her heart raced in surprise at seeing the badges the horsemen wore on their sleeves: a thornbush. The Thornleigh emblem. These were her father’s men. She spotted their swarthy leader, Captain Lundy.
    She craned to see if her father was with them, but the crowd blocked her view. People leaned out from windows in the houses four stories high that lined the bridge, the buildings so tightly packed they blocked the sun. A handcart and a mule-drawn wagon stood abandoned by their drivers, who had crammed themselves into doorways. The mule cast confused eyes on the tense scene and brayed. Someone had left a packhorse mare hastily tethered to a post. It shuffled nervously.
    Kate needed to get closer for a clear look at the gunman. She squeezed between the backs of people and the doorways, edging forward until she was a long stone’s throw from the cornered man. The tethered mare was to her right. Looking across its withers she saw her father. He sat astride his bay stallion, unmoving, his sword drawn, eyes fixed on his quarry. The three of them formed a triangle: Lord Thornleigh at the west side of the bridge, Kate at the east, the hunted man halfway to Southwark, his way barred by her father’s mounted men. He was trapped. But he held his pistol rigid to fend off attack, jerking it erratically back and forth between the horsemen at the bridge’s London end and those at the Southwark end.
    The mare tethered beside Kate danced nervously in place, swinging its rump around, again blocking her view. Cursing in frustration, Kate moved the few steps to the back of the mule-drawn wagon. Its load of firewood and bundled faggots was low enough to see over.
    Her father raised his sword in a gesture of authority, its tip to the sky, like a priest raising a crucifix. “I arrest you,” he commanded in a clear, calm voice, “in the name of Elizabeth, by the Grace of God queen of England and Ireland, defender of the faith. Lower your weapon.”
    â€œA pox on your hellcat queen! A Jezebel!”
    An angry roar rose from the crowd.
    The gunman suddenly swung his pistol at the Southwark-side horsemen and shouted, “Move, you filthy heretics!” He aimed, his hand steady now, at the mounted man in the center, Captain Lundy. The crowd gasped.
    Lundy and his