“You needn’t trouble yourself so about Nicholas, Elise. He knows this city as well as he knows his ship.”
Though Justin misread her concern, Elise managed a smile for his gentle assurance. It was not that she was unconcerned over the possible plight of the Hansa captain, but the danger to Maxim seemed far more real and imminent. As the moments passed, the burden of her distress grew more insufferable.
Justin bent closer to a crystal pane and scraped clear a larger peephole as a vague shadow took on the appearance of a cloaked form. The man leaned into the gale-force winds as he approached the house, slipping and sliding as he fought against the powerful gusts.
“Ho, there! I believe we’re about to receive a guest who has braved the elements to seek us out.” Justin caught Elise’s silent query and read the restrained anxiety in her furrowed brow. A sharp pang of pity made him return to the glass. He strained to make out the figure, moving from pane to pane to get a better view, then he straightened and shrugged as he gazed down at her. “ ‘Tis only a stranger, Elise.”
She sighed and, clasping her hands together, glanced at the timepiece on the table. The hour was approaching eight, late enough for Maxim to have finished his meeting with Hilliard and returned.
“Open the door, Justin,” Therese bade, “ere the poor man freeze to death.”
The young man hastened to the entrance and swung the portal open just as the fellow was about to apply his knuckles to the wooden planks. The startled man gaped at Justin for a moment with his fist raised, then, somewhat embarrassed, he cleared his throat and assumed a more dignified stance. Pushing aside the snow-covered hood of his cloak, he made known his objective.
“M-my name is S-Sheffield Thomas, sir,” he stuttered through cold-stiffened lips. “I-I’ve c-come to speak with M-Mistress Elise Radborne about a m-matter. Lord Seymour sent a message that he had a matter of great import to attend to with Hilliard. I assumed he’d meet me at my inn afterward, but he didn’t come, and I thought perhaps he might’ve come back here.”
“Lord Seymour is not here at the moment, but Mistress Radborne is. Would you care to come in and warm yourself by the fire while I fetch her?” The man entered and Justin took his cloak and then led the guest into a small antechamber where a warming fire greeted him. “If you’ll wait here, I shall tell Mistress Radborne you’ve come.”
Sheffield drew a large handkerchief from his blanchet as the young man left him and applied it to his red, bulbous nose. Upon hearing footsteps, he lifted his watering eyes to the doorway where a slender, feminine figure moved with grace through the haze that blurred his sight, taking on a beauty he had not recently beheld. The man hastily dabbed his kerchief to his eyes until he could focus clearly, and was amazed to find the vision incredibly real.
“Good sir.” Justin hid a smile as the fellow snapped his mouth closed. “May I make you acquainted with our guest, Mistress Radborne?”
The aging, bald-headed man managed to bend his frost-stiffened body in a brief bow. “My pleasure, mistress. My pleasure indeed!”
“You have information for me, sir?” Elise questioned softly.
Her voice, though fraught with tension, reminded Sheffield of a spot in England near his home where a wee brook tumbled melodiously over a rocky bed deep in a small, mossy glen. Indeed, he was half a mind to think he was dreaming the moment. After all, the icy winds were so numbing, he might have passed into paradise without realizing it. “Yea, mistress. Lord Seymour asked me to speak with you about an incident which I witnessed some months ago. I understand he is not here.”
“He was detained,” Elise murmured, struggling to ignore her worries. This stranger could have news of her father, and through him she might learn information of her sire’s whereabouts. It should have been a moment of hopeful anticipation for her, but she was ill-met to dismiss her concerns for Maxim so easily.
Justin closed the door and invited the man to take a chair. “Mistress Radborne has asked that I stay and witness. Be that acceptable to you, sir?”
“Certainly.” Sheffield declined the chair and edged closer to the fire as he faced the other occupants of the room. Folding his icy hands behind his back where they would catch the heat, he began to speak. “I’m an English merchant. Some time ago I brought me ship to Bremen and continued on to Nuremberg and the fairs at Leipzig to trade for merchandise from afar. Karr Hilliard bade me come to Lubeck and view his precious wares ere I returned to England. Thus I came to Lubeck a full season and a half ago to trade with the man. I had amassed a rich cargo and had such treasures that kings would have vied for the opportunity to own them. I was sure Hilliard and I would strike many a bargain, but alas, me ship burned at anchor the night after I off-loaded a few samples to show him.” He waxed slightly morose. “I lost me captain and a full dozen seamen left to guard her. Well-armed the lot were too, but come morning, there was only the charred stubs of a mast jutting up out of the water. The harbormaster had to haul it over and rip the hull apart with grappling hooks to clear the area, choice spot that it was.” A light syrup of derision dripped from his words. “Not a scrap of her timbers looked familiar.” He jabbed a finger into the palm of his other hand to emphasize his point. “And not a shred of all that finery has come a-bobbin’ up this whole time since. ‘Twas as if the brigands stole away me ship and burned an empty hulk in her place.”
Suddenly lost in thought, Sheffield turned to stare into the fire and spread his hands to warm them for a long moment before he wheeled about again and continued as if no time had elapsed at all. “The next morn the rest of the crew was roused from a drunken stupor in a scurvy alehouse and could speak naught of the night before. Few there be who could drink them blokes under the table. Still, when I questioned the burgomaster o’ Lubeck, he rattled off excuses so swiftly, he made me head swim. He claimed to have looked into the matter, but as yet no sign of me ship nor me men has come to light.” Sheffield’s tale continued to captivate his audience. “I’ve learned to speak the jargon more ably since, and here and there I’ve overheard stories of English sailors chained in irons and forced to walk the plank of one o’ Hilliard’s ships.” He shrugged, and his eyes grew distant again. “When I try to question anyone about it, they sidle away and talk no more of it.”
“I’m sorry to hear of your losses, Master Thomas,” Elise said kindly. “But what has this to do with my father?”
Master Thomas started to answer her, then coughed and spoke in distressed tones to Justin. “Prithee, sir. Me craw be parched and raw. Would you have a wee draught to ease the blistering of the cold?”
“Of course.” Justin nodded and moved from his place behind Elise’s chair to a sideboard where he rang a small bell. A moment later a maid bustled in, bearing a wide tray which in turn bore, to the guest’s dismay, a steaming pot and a triplet of cups. Justin smiled as he noted the man’s disappointment and, after pouring half a cup, liberally enriched it from a flagon he took from the sideboard.
Sheffield eagerly accepted the proffered brew and, after sniffing its steaming essence, sipped long and loudly. “Ahhh,” he sighed. “The heat”—he paused pointedly—“does wonders for the throat.” He sipped again and returned the empty cup to the tray after another statement of pleasure. In slightly more fluid tones than before he continued his tale. “ ‘Twas some months ago I gots the idea to watch Hilliard’s ships as they came into port or took on cargo, just by chance there would be something of me own wares I would spy. In so doing I saw a strange happening, which at first I was sure involved one of me own men.”
Elise sipped her tea and tried not to think of Maxim dealing with such a man as Karr Hilliard. Sheffield’s account gave her thoughts no ease at all.
“Hilliard’s great ship, the Grau Falke, had just arrived from the Stilliards in London,” Sheffield recounted. “From a safe distance I watched until I saw a man bound and chained with as much weight as he could carry being escorted from the ship.”
“And the man whom you saw was an Engl
ishman?” Elise questioned carefully.
“Aye, mistress.”
“How do you know?” Justin inquired.
“Later I was in an alehouse, and I recognized one of the guards. After buying the bloke a few ales, I asked about the man.” Sheffield chuckled as he enlivened the story. “ ‘I heard ye had a mutiny,’ I says to him, and the fellow near cuts me down with his eyes. ‘ ‘Tis all abuzz and about,’ I says. ‘Why, ye brought one o’ them beggars back to be hanged . . . or so’s I heard,’ I says, not wantin’ to let on ‘at I was spyin’ on the ship.
“ ‘Ye heard ill,’ he spat in his funny twisted tongue. ‘There be no mutiny on a Hansa deck. Never been, never will! ‘Twas just some English bloke Hilliard caught a-spyin’ in the Stilliards.’
“ ‘Aye,’ I says, ‘ye’ll bring Drake and his dogs down ‘pon ye, takin’ an Englishman from his own sod like that.’
“ ‘Bah,’ he sneered, gathering up his coins.” Sheffield waxed rich in his mimicry of the guard. “ ‘T’ey neffer know he’s gone.’ The man would give me no more and left me.”
Elise sat forward on the edge of her chair, encouraged by his tale. “What did you notice about the man who was shackled? Was he tall? Thin? Dark-haired? Even-featured?” To each of these Sheffield nodded, and her hopes strengthened. “Tell me, by chance did you notice if the man was wearing a large ring of onyx and gold on his first finger?”
Sheffield paused a moment in thought and finally shook his head. “That I cannot say, mistress. He was chained with his hands before him, but as far as I can remember he wore no ring at all.”
Elise’s shoulders slumped slightly as she struggled against the grip of disappointment. The ring would have been a sure way of identifying her father, but now she could not be certain who the man really was.
“Surely they would have taken such a ring from him,” Justin pointed out.
“Of course,” Sheffield agreed, wanting to see again that spark of hope he had briefly glimpsed in the sapphire eyes.
“If my father is truly here . . . and if he is still alive”— Elise spoke the words slowly as she fought the invading grayness of doubt and uncertainty—“then the only likely place he would be is somewhere in the dungeons of the Hansa.”
“Nicholas might be able to help find him,” Justin offered.
The deep blue eyes lowered cautiously. Maxim had warned of any attempt to involve Nicholas, and she had to be careful, lest she give Justin some encouragement in that endeavor. “Is there anything more you can tell me, Master Thomas?”
“Nay, mistress.” Sheffield sadly shook his head. It fair broke his heart to disappoint her. “I wish I could fill your sails with a sterner wind, but I fear what I’ve given you is precious feeble indeed.”
“Had you given me a gale, sir, I’d have followed it to the ends of the earth.” Elise straightened and met his gaze directly. “But to what end?” Her hand flipped from side to side. “Is he here? Is he there? I’ve followed my quest in a dozen different directions to no avail. Do you give me a new one? Surely I’m no worse than I was before, and you give me some hope that he is near.” She slid her hand beneath a fold of her gown, then withdrew it and extended her closed fist to him. In some bemusement Sheffield stared at it and raised questioning brows. “Here, take this,” she encouraged, her fingers opening. “ ‘Tis something for your time and trouble.” The sovereign seemed overlarge in her small hand. “For venturing forth on this miserable eventide.”
“Ah, nay, mistress. You do me shame. ‘Twould be ill-done, indeed, were I to take even a farthing for laying a father’s hand to his daughter’s. What I’ve given you is naught but the dregs of the smallest hope. You’ve shared your warmth and I’ve listened to the sweetest English tongue since me own good mistress passed away. I bid you good eventide, mistress and kind sir. I’ll be about my way.”
Justin let the man out and came back to lean against the doorjamb of the chamber portal. Elise sat staring into the fire, hardly aware of him regarding her. He contemplated the slight tugging of small, white teeth against a bottom lip and the rubbing of one slender thumb against the other as she clasped her hands together. He could almost see her mind struggling against a flooding tide of helpless frustration.
“What are you thinking of, Elise?” The question was quietly spoken, barely reaching across the space between them. He had grown fond of the girl since her arrival and wanted to see her happy.
Elise looked up at him and for the first time discovered beneath that facade of carefree gaiety a young man filled with concerns. She laughed softly in an attempt to hide her own. “There are times, Justin, when a woman must keep her musings to herself.”
Justin watched her turn away, and there was no further indication of her restlessness as she folded her hands demurely in her lap, though he could well surmise she was dissecting piece by piece the information Sheffield Thomas had given them. Becoming deeply involved in his own ponderings, Justin moved past her chair to stand before the hearth and stare into the frolicking flames. “Once more,” he mentally sighed to himself, “Hilliard’s repute takes on the blacker shade of midnight . . . skulduggery, theft, and piracy. Indeed, what shallow right has the man to lay an acid tongue to Drake’s deeds? What Drake has gained in battle on the high seas, Hilliard has acquired through treachery and murder.”
It had been as evident to Sheffield Thomas as it would be to any who had to confront the same problem. Hilliard, through the Hansa, held sway and power over the officials of free Lubeck. There was no use to seek justice through that course. Long ago Justin had come upon that truth. Visions of a hangman’s rope bending Hilliard’s neck or a headsman raising an axe above his large head had faded when he realized the futility of such dreams, but another aspiration had come in their stead. With each passing day the desire grew stronger within Justin to see Hilliard’s ponderous jowls quivering with fear as his blade slid keenly beneath the man’s breastbone to sunder that evil heart.
Elise roused from her musings to consider Justin for a quiet space, somewhat reluctant to break into his ruminations. He stood in a gallant pose, his weight on one leg, his other knee slightly cocked, his hands folded behind his back. She could see no trace of the flippant, jesting youth, for now he seemed taller, broader of shoulder, and more of a man than a moment before.
Briefly she glimpsed a slight twist of a satisfied smile curving his lips, and then she recalled his sudden interest when Sheffield Thomas had mentioned Hilliard. It came to her that Justin’s performance as callow youth would effectively divert the attentions and suspicions of his elders, which left him free to roam and wander where he would. He had a remarkable knowledge of the Hansa, at least locally, and of Karr Hilliard, certainly more than could be explained by mere passing fancy.
Before her thoughts could bear the fruit of a question, Justin faced her and, with a show of casual interest, spoke in a most solicitous tone. “Why do you suppose Maxim went to see Karr Hilliard? Would it have been to inquire after your father?”
Elise met his gaze with a shrug, meaning to play the simple youth herself as she struggled not to show her distrust. “Perhaps, but I cannot say with any certainty that his visit was for that purpose. He gave me no reason, nor did I feel he needed to.”
Justin saw her sniff lightly and regard the back of her hand in silent reproof. He smiled behind the hand that rubbed his cheek, realizing he had touched a tender chord. “My pardon, Elise, I meant no unkindness.” He pressed on as if musing. “ ‘Tis just that Hilliard only gives his time and his favors to those who might be of benefit to him. What has he to gain from Maxim?”
“Very little, I would imagine,” she replied cautiously. “Maxim can lay claim to neither his properties nor his wealth. He is virtually penniless, and as far as I know, he is quite free of allegiances save that of restoring his honor.”
“And yet Hilliard has called upon him. ‘Twould be unlike the man to invite Maxim into his lair for the single purpose of answering inquiries about your
father. Nay, there must be something more.”
Elise arched her brow, feeling the prick of his prying. If he was suggesting that Maxim was in league with such a man, the brash youth was about to be set back upon his heels. “Perhaps you’ll enlighten me, Sir Justin. You seem to know Karr Hilliard quite well yourself. What would you say was his reason for bidding Maxim come?”
Justin settled in a chair across from hers and, propping his elbows on the wooden arms, musefully folded his fingers together. He observed her haughty, but guarded, manner for a long moment before he gave answer. “Of late, Hilliard has been ranting about Drake taking his ships and of Elizabeth giving the man letters of marque condoning piracy on the high seas. Now Hilliard beckons an Englishman to his chambers? Of course, he is a deposed lord . . . but he is familiar with the English court. I ask you in turn, Elise, what would your judgment of such a meeting be?”
Elise lifted her chin, taking offense as she chafed at the direction of his reasoning. In a tightly controlled voice she inquired, “How is it that you know Karr Hilliard so well, Justin? How can you draw such conclusions unless you are closely familiar with the man?” Justin was aware of her advancing disdain and smiled blandly. He had been impressed, even infatuated by her beauty from the first moment of their meeting, but he had also sensed a strong attraction between the maid and the Marquess. Her reaction supported his suspicions that she doted on the Englishman, but the questions remained. Was this man, by his reputation an accused traitor, involved in something far worse than either of them could imagine? “I know Karr Hilliard because I’ve observed him closely for some years now. There were circumstances linking Karr Hilliard with the death of my father. Indeed, I believe either he or his henchman, Gustave, was directly responsible for my father’s murder.”
The shield Elise had begun to raise as protection against his probing questions lowered with the enrichment of knowledge. “Then you understand my worries.”