Nithsdale shifted his arms in an attempt to alleviate the pain in his wrists, which had been rubbed red and raw from the heavy iron shackles placed around them. He’d worn them often, having spent the past few weeks being moved to different jails around England.
Glancing through the barred windows, he caught a glimpse of the stone archway they were headed toward. Nithsdale recognized it from afar as the famous Temple Bar gate. Then something else caught his eye, something he’d never seen on his previous visits to London—there were strange sticks lined up along the top of the arch like porcupine quills.
Wait . . . what’s on top of those poles?
When they neared the archway, he understood. These were sticks with severed heads stuck on the spiked tips. Some of the heads had their eyes open, staring blankly into the mist.
It feels as if I’m looking upon the Gates of Hell.
Nithsdale tried not to throw up as the carriage rolled through the gate. He thought about his wife, Winifred, and his son having to see his father’s head on a spike and felt even more sick to his stomach.
After a few minutes, Nithsdale could smell the stink of the Thames River. He peered again through the barred windows of the stagecoach. Through the mist, he could see the foreboding stone wall of the Tower.
In the dark, it’s like something out of a nightmare.
Armed guards kept a lookout from the top of the wall. Beyond it, Nithsdale could see the four spires of the Tower stretching high into the night, lights flickering in their windows. There was a cluster of other buildings around the main tower, making the entire compound seem like a small city within the city. Nithsdale had never been to the Tower on his previous trips into London—he’d seen it only from afar, in the daytime—but he knew it was to be feared. “The Bloody Tower,” he’d heard it called. Men and women held there were brutally tortured within its chambers and, more often than not, barbarically executed.
As a lord rather than a commoner, Nithsdale knew he would be granted a stay in one of the better cells and would not be tortured. It didn’t really matter, though. Noble or not, he would soon be dead just the same.
Inside the Tower walls, he saw prisoners—most of them Scottish Highlanders—shivering in the cold as they were led off to their cells, shuffling past a blood-stained chopping block.
About the Author
Photo by Martah Otfinoski
STEVEN OTFINOSKI has written more than two hundred books for children and young adults, including the Step into History series for Scholastic and nine titles in the Tangled History series for Capstone Press. Three of his YA books have been named Books for the Teen Age by the New York Public Library. He has an MFA in creative writing from Fairfield University in Connecticut, where he teaches composition and creative writing. Steve is also an award-winning playwright with more than sixty productions of his plays to his credit. His children’s theater company, History Alive!, presents one-person shows about people from American history to schoolchildren. He, his wife, Beverly, and Jake, their mini Aussie shepherd, divide their time between Connecticut and the Berkshires in Massachusetts, where he reviews summer theater for the New England Theatre Journal.
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About the Series Editor
MICHAEL TEITELBAUM has been a writer and editor of children’s books for more than twenty-five years. He worked on staff as an editor at Golden Books, Grossett & Dunlop, and Macmillan. As a writer, Michael’s fiction work includes The Scary States of America, fifty short stories—one from each state—all about the paranormal, published by Random House, and The Very Hungry Zombie: A Parody, done with artist extraordinaire Jon Apple, published by Skyhorse. His nonfiction work includes Jackie Robinson: Champion for Equality, published by Sterling; The Baseball Hall of Fame, a two-volume encyclopedia, published by Grolier; Sports in America, 1980–89, published by Chelsea House; and Great Moments in Women’s Sports and Great Inventions: Radio and Television, both published by World Almanac Library. Michael lives with his wife, Sheleigah, and two talkative cats in the beautiful Catskill Mountains of upstate New York.
Books in This Series
Great Escapes
Nazi Prison Camp Escape
Journey to Freedom, 1838
Civil War Breakout
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Copyright
GREAT ESCAPES #4: SURVIVAL IN THE WILDERNESS. Copyright © 2020 by Stonesong Press LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2020 by James Bernardin
Cover design by David Curtis and Laura Mock
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Digital Edition DECEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-286046-0
ISBN 978-0-06-286045-3 (trade bdg.)
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-286044-6 (pbk.)
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2021222324PC/BRR10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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