The Empty Noose

by Linda Root

The King's First Minister Lord Robert Cecil, Earl of Salusbury, had set May 3rd as the date for the execution of the Jesuit leaders convicted of complicity in the Gunpowder Treason. He had delayed it twice before in hopes his army of Pursuivants would capture the remaining fugitive, flamboyant John Gerard in time for him to witness the grisly execution of the elderly Jesuit Superior, Henry Garnet, knowing he was to be the next to suffer. However, Gerard had eluded gallows justice more than once. His most notable effort had occurred while Elizabeth lived when the Jesuit escaped his Tower prison in an aerial fete involving linens and ropes. Other forces, not all of them English, had a rescue in the making involving the Scottish adventurer Will Hepburn's ship, La Belle Ecossaise. It was far short of an ironclad scheme. Sir William Hepburn had an unbridled distrust of the English and scant affection for the newly anointed King James I, ostentatious son of the Queen of Scots who for a few months almost forty years ago had been his infant stepbrother.Moreover, Hepburn had inherited his dead father Bothwell's abiding distrust of all things Catholic. When James was wee, Bothwell stood outside of the door during the Christening. He had made Queen Marie cry by refusing to marry her in a Catholic ceremony. Even if the powers seeking Will's cooperation found a way to manipulate him into participating in a most unlikely a rescue, Gerard's supporters would have to find him first and deliver him to a coastal port and row. Will knew more enough about the Earl of Salisbury and the Gunpowder Treason to feel safer in open waters than at the Stuart Court. Also, Hepburn had promised his guidwife Daisy Kirkcaldie never again to set foot on English soil. While Hepburn was an adventurer famous for his derring-do, Daisy was no one to be crossed. Moreover, even if the rescue party had the means to enlist Hepburn's sense of honor and engage Daisy's determination to ride into the breach, what if the charismatic English Jesuit John Gerard were to have conflicting passions of is own?

298 pages, Paperback

Published June 20, 2019

About the author

Root was born at a FDR fundraiser on the 23rd of April and grew up in a box seat in Municipal Stadium, home of the Indians--Perhaps,not quite true, but close. Her mother missed the fund raiser when her water broke in the taxi, and she only lived in Municipal Stadium on weekends. Then came the Dark Ages when she moved to San Diego where there were boats and beaches, but in 1951,no major league sports. The Padres were Class A, and their field was in the flight pattern to Lindbergh Field. But the dawn did come and she was off to Pomona College on State of California and Union-Tribune scholarships. She graduated and went to Princeton--at least that was the plan. With much encouragement from her mother who wanted grandchildren, she married, and had children, and married, and married, and finally went to law school to be a lawyer instead of being infatuated with them. In her last year, her husband died at 35 of an undisclosed cause and six months later,her adolescent son died of a congenital disease. She took a semester off, married an old friend who had not given up on her, and went back to school.She graduated valedictorian of the class at what is now Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Three days before she aced the grueling California Bar Exam, she gave birth to her youngest son Russ, whose art appears in two of her novels. After 23 years as a prosecutor, the last seven spent as Supervising Deputy DA in the Morongo Basin of San Bernardino County, she retired due to a hearing loss and has been writing historical fiction since 2008. Her debut is The First Marie and the Queen of Scots, the first in The Queen of Scots Suite. She is now working on the fourth in that series, and a 'chic book' crime novel based on her experiences as a major crime prosecutor, Hurricane Camile and the Morongo Blonds. She lived in Yucca Valley with husband Chris and two very giant long haired Alaskan Malamutes with 1/4Samoyed in the mix.