The Noble Assassin. Christie Dickason

thud.

      As I emerged from darkness, I found that I could not breathe. I sucked at air that would not come. Searing pain burned under my ribs. Dark mist in my head blurred my sight. My several different parts felt disconnected from each other, like the limbs of a traitor butchered on the scaffold. An ankle somewhere in the dark mist began to throb. Then an arm.

      ‘Madam!’ said a tiny, distant voice.

      The mist cleared a little more. I blinked and moved my eyeballs in their sockets, still trying to breathe in.

      A wild accusing eye met mine, only a few inches away. It did not blink.

      With a painful whoop, I breathed in at last.

      My groom, Kit, stooped beside me. ‘Madam! Are you badly hurt?’

      Whoop! I gulped at the air. Then took another wonderful breath. I swivelled my head. My neck, though jarred, was intact. I tested the throbbing leg. Also not broken, so far as I could judge. My left hand felt like a bag of cold water, but my fingers moved. ‘Not fatally . . .’ I sucked at the air again. ‘. . . it seems.’

      ‘Thanks be to God!’ He offered his hand to help me rise.

      In truth, he had to haul me up. I stood unsteadily. My left ankle refused to take my weight. ‘Did you see what happened?’

      ‘No . . .’ He inhaled. ‘. . . madam.’ He was having as much trouble breathing as I. ‘No hole in the road . . . just stumbled and fell without reason . . . that I saw.’

      ‘How does he?’ Carefully, I turned my head.

      We blew out long shaky breaths.

      The hired gelding lay with forelegs crumpled awkwardly under him. Flecks of foam marked the sweaty, walnut-coloured neck. Wind stirred his near-black mane. White bone showed through the skin on his knees. The wild, staring eye still did not blink. The arch of ribs hung motionless. The stirring mane was only the illusion of life. He had not stepped on me, not fallen on me, had saved me but not himself.

      We stared down at the long, yellow, chisel teeth in the gaping mouth.

      The absolute stillness, where a few moments before had been heat and pounding motion, pricked the back of my neck with incomprehension. I had seen the sudden death of a vital creature before in hunting, more than once. But I could never grasp the sudden nothingness – one moment alive, the next moment a carcass that could never change back.

      One of the horse’s ears had been turned inside out in the fall. I pulled off my right riding glove with my teeth, knelt painfully with Kit’s help and straightened the ear with my good hand, as if this act might somehow help undo what had happened. I brushed away a fly already crawling on the horse’s eyelash and looked again at the long, yellow teeth. An old horse. Too old for our pounding pace. I had killed him with my ambitious urgency.

      I felt the skin between my shoulder blades quiver, touched by a Divine reproving finger. I laid my hand on the smooth, hard neck, still warm, still damp with sweat. This death was surely a sign. A warning of failure. The skin of my back quivered again.

      ‘He was too old to keep up such a pace,’ Kit said. ‘Forgive me, I should have seen . . .’

      ‘Merely old,’ I said to the sky. ‘An old horse, dead from wicked carelessness perhaps, but by natural cause.’

      God sent no sign of rage that I was ignoring His sign. Lightning did not split a nearby oak. A hail of toads did not fall.

      ‘Help me up.’ I stood and tested my ankle again. Still watery, as if the bones had dissolved.

      ‘I should have . . .’ Kit’s voice shook.

      I felt his hand trembling. My thoughts had now cleared enough for me to remember that he would have been blamed had I been killed in the fall. I looked at his white face.

      ‘Not your fault,’ I said. ‘Mine. And the ostler who hired the horse to me . . . knew that we meant to ride hard. I should have paid more mind to . . .’ I meant to touch his arm in reassurance, but found myself clutching it in a wave of giddiness.

      After a moment I patted the arm and let go. I was on my feet. Alive. A clergyman would no doubt call me innocent of wrongdoing, in the case of the horse, at least. But, insofar as I could define a sin, failing a creature in my care was one of them.

      However, sin was not the same as a warning. To my knowledge, sin seldom seemed to prevent worldly success.

      ‘Please take my saddle and bags from the body,’ I said. ‘I’ll ride behind you until we can find me another horse.’

      His eyes widened but he obeyed. He also had the grace to pretend not to notice my gasps of pain when he lifted me up behind his saddle.

      We made a curious sight, when we rode just before sundown into a modest farmyard, scattering pigs and hens. Faces appeared in windows and doors to stare at a liveried groom with a dirty, dishevelled lady behind him, their horse’s hindquarters lumpy with too many saddlebags, a spare side-saddle and a flattened farthingale.

      I paid the farmer far too much to sell me an ancient mare that fitted my saddle. He could not believe his luck. I was overjoyed to find any mount at all.

      I did not try to gallop her. I was grateful that she managed to move me forward. In truth, I could not have survived a gallop, even though I had bound my ankle to steady it.

      By the time we stopped at our scheduled inn to sup and sleep, much later than intended and long after dark, my left wrist had swollen so that I could not hold the reins in that hand. My head thumped. Preparing for sleep, I found blood smeared on the back of my linen shift, from my raw thighs. Because I could not remove it, I had to sleep in my boot.

      The next morning, I could not move. Slowly, cursing, I forced each limb into action. Inch by inch, I pushed myself upright. I had to call for a kitchen maid from the inn to help me dress.

      I blinked water from my eyes as Kit carried me into the stable yard and lifted me up into my saddle, now buckled onto the new hired mount. As we set off again at a gallop towards Scotland, when he was behind me and could no longer hear me nor see my face, I wept openly with pain and cursed my rebelling sinews.

      The reward had best be worth what it was costing.

      I arrived in Berwick at midday the following day.

       Chapter 5

      BERWICK CASTLE, NORTHUMBERLAND, 1603

      Queen Anne, my intended prey, stood by a window in the little presence chamber in Berwick Castle, gazing out towards the foggy, darkening sea. I fastened my will onto her like a hound setting at a partridge.

      She ignored me and continued to look out into the dusk.

      I tottered towards her, past curious courtiers, inhaling sharply with each step and hobbling like a one-legged sailor. At a respectful distance I sank into the deepest curtsy that I could manage.

      ‘The Countess of Bedford, Your Highness,’ said the gentleman usher, in French.

      Let me rise! I begged her silently. This was no time to faint from pain.

      She gazed out of the window, still ignoring me.

      If she ever let me speak, I could show her that I spoke French. But then, I must have seemed an unlikely companion, with my limp, misshapen hand and pain curdling my wits.

      There’s nothing to see out there but fog! Please, let me rise!

      Five grooms began to light candles against the sudden fall of darkness. A sconce on the wall threw a sudden wash of unsteady yellow light across the Queen’s face.

      I did not like what I saw.

      Her tall, lean figure stood half turned away from me, dressed in grey satin, one hand clenched on the pleated lip of her farthingale. The nearest corner of her tight lips was turned down under a long, large nose made larger