The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(83)

And they did so wish. The Spanish soldiers allowed Anabel the courtesy of withdrawing with her advisors to a windowless chamber with only a single door that was guarded from outside. His fists opening and closing at his sides until they cramped, Kit listened to Anabel read aloud the message the men had carried. It came from Tomás Navarro.

Hull has been taken, Navarro wrote. The city has acquiesced and thus far been spared violence. To ensure her continuing safety, we require the presence of Her Royal Highness the Infanta Anne Isabella to join Her Majesty Queen Mary aboard La Santa Catalina anchored at Hull until the city of York is also safely in our hands.

“At which point, presumably,” Kit said, “you are marched back into York to a glorious reception from the conquering Spanish troops and your Catholic subjects. Or, if you prove difficult, Mary Stuart does it for you.” He swore and shook his head. “It’s mad.”

“Navarro is mad,” Anabel said slowly. “Just mad enough to think this would work. But not so mad as to be unprepared for the worst. If I don’t agree, the Spanish will wreak violence on Hull.”

“They would never hurt you.”

“They won’t have to. I will not let them hurt anyone else in my place.”

“You cannot possibly agree!” Kit yelled.

“It’s not your decision.”

“The hell it isn’t. And I will use force to stop you if I must.”

“I will not risk the destruction of Hull!”

Through their clash of temper, Pippa’s cool voice intervened. “There will be no destruction tonight. The Infanta will present herself as requested at La Santa Catalina.”

It was difficult to say who understood her first—Anabel, Kit, or Matthew. But it was Anabel whose voice rose the loudest over the instinctive refusals. “Absolutely not. This is not the time for playacting.”

“What has all our playacting ever been but a prelude to this moment?”

“You think Navarro will be so charmed by your playacting that he will forgo his threats? Don’t be a fool, Pippa. If you deliver yourself into Spanish hands in place of me, all you will have done is bought time for York to panic.”

“No. I will have bought time for you to escape and bring York an army to save it.”

Kit breathed out as he turned his full attention on his twin. “Stephen,” he said, voicing the words held silent in Pippa’s mind, clear in his own now that he paid attention. “You have sent for Stephen’s troops, haven’t you?”

Pippa’s smile was as bright as their childhood. “Stephen’s troops are only twenty miles off.”

“We could send someone else to alert him!” Anabel snapped.

“Stephen needs you to be certain of what to do about the threat. He needs direction.”

“You could direct him,” Anabel pointed out to Pippa. “You could escape the city while I delay Navarro.”

Kit felt that his head—not to mention his heart—would split as he listened to the two women he loved best in the world debate which of them would risk her life this night. How, he wondered, did Matthew manage to stand there without protest as his wife offered herself in place of Anabel?

“If you deliver yourself to the Spanish,” Pippa said sternly to Anabel, “Navarro will hold a hostage whose worth is great enough to stop the English army in its tracks. Stephen would listen to me, but your other armies? Only you can command them, Your Highness. And only I can buy you the necessary time to do it.”

Pippa stepped closer, until the two women were only inches apart. “It will work, Anabel,” she whispered urgently. “I have seen it.”

There was a weight to those four words, as though Pippa were momentarily able to impress upon the minds of all those present her own peculiar knowledge of what was to come. Kit had no doubt everyone could feel it. For himself, there was something lurking behind that weight, glimpsed through a door left ajar, and he could sense a tumult of other words and other weights. But the moment he turned his attention in that direction, Pippa slammed the door shut against him.

“Who will go with you?” Anabel asked. And as simply as that, assented to this most dangerous plan. Leaving Kit’s heart in pieces.

—

The trick was in the clothing and the bearing. Blessed by nature with a similar height and build, with a bone structure that spoke of blood ties both Boleyn and Plantagenet between them, Pippa and Anabel had some of the physical traits necessary to pass for one another. And those they did not possess—notably their hair—could be manufactured. Since a severe bout of scarlatina several years ago that had necessitated cutting her hair, Anabel had in her keeping several expensive wigs of vivid red-gold. Pippa produced one of them now and, surprisingly, another wig of dark blonde hair with the distinctive black streak that matched her own.

Anabel raised an eyebrow. “You’ve kept this all these years?”

“Why do you think I had it made?”

“I thought it was to tease the French ambassador eight years ago.” Anabel paused, then smiled bitterly. “But then, you always have four or five reasons for everything you do. Even when you were fifteen.”

Pippa answered the unvoiced question in her friend’s mind. “Yes, I knew it would be needed someday. No, I did not know why.” Not precisely, she amended silently. She had known even then that it would be for a dangerous purpose.