by Cynthia Hand
J
Jane. He wondered if she was thinking of him, too. If he would ever see her again.
A
He’d never see a lot of people again. He’d never kiss his mother on the cheek, or make fun of Stan (who wasn’t so bad, was he? Not really. It’d been unfair for him to resent Stan all this time, G thought). He’d never give Billingsly another ridiculous order, or make Tempie laugh, or try to irritate his father just to see the aggravation on the old man’s face.
N
His father. G chipped harder at the stone. His father. Who had orchestrated this entire mess. Who would undoubtedly be fine, so long as he could switch to the winning side.
E
Who’d let his own son burn if it would save his life.
G decided that he couldn’t think about it anymore. He put the finishing touches on the e of Jane’s name, and then paced around the room, looking for something, anything, to get his mind off burning flesh. He found a few books, skimmed through the first few pages of each, and then tossed them one by one to the side. Maybe this had been meant to be Jane’s room. She was probably locked somewhere with a barrel of apples.
A soft flutter at the door made him stop his pacing. Someone had slipped a piece of parchment underneath.
He hurried over and unfolded it and saw Jane’s familiar handwriting. His heart pounded. He’d never received a love letter before, and although he knew his letter would most likely also be a good-bye letter, he felt some wild hope that she would confess some depth of feeling for him.
Dearest Edward,
I hoped to visit you this morning, but when I arrived at the palace I was informed that you are not receiving visitors. I must confess my surprise and disappointment that you would not see even me, but I know there must be a good reason, and I suspect that this self-imposed isolation means that your illness is taking its toll. For this I am so very sorry, cousin, and I wish there was something I could do to make you well again.
I’m sure you must be wondering what it is I came to see you about this morning, mere hours after my wedding. My dear cousin, the wedding is precisely the topic I wanted to discuss with you. Or rather, my newly acquired husband.
Gifford is a horse.
I’m certain you knew this, what with your referrals to “his condition” and assumptions that I would find it intriguing. What I cannot fathom is why you chose not to tell me. We’ve always told each other everything, have we not? I consider you to be my most trusted confidant, my dearest and most beloved friend. Why then, did you neglect this rather critical detail? It doesn’t make sense.
But perhaps in this, too, I wonder now, you felt you had a good reason.
I hope that we will be able to speak more on this subject when I return from my honeymoon in the country.
All my love,
Jane
G refolded the letter, resisting the urge to crumple it up and toss it in the corner. He wasn’t offended by her surprise at his condition, but did she need to sign it “all my love”? All her love seemed a little excessive.
It was abundantly clear to G that Jane loved Edward; he’d never forget the look on her face when she’d been told that the king was dead. But had she loved him loved him? Was she thinking about her cousin right now, preparing herself to join her beloved in death?
Not that it really mattered. G tried to shake his insecurity away and instead be grateful to whoever had given this to him. His wife’s hand had written this letter. He could picture her face as she wrote it, her mouth pursing and brow furrowing the way it did when she concentrated. He was about to place the paper in his own coat pocket when he noticed something written in different handwriting near the corner of one of the folded edges.
It was one word.
Skunk
Well, that was a surprising word. No beauty in a word like skunk.
He didn’t recognize the handwriting. But no matter who wrote it, it was his only connection to Jane. G placed it in his breast pocket and for a moment pressed it against his chest.
Some time later he heard a scratching coming from the door. G shook his head, chalking the noise up to random castle creaks and groans, but then he heard it again. A distinct scratching sound.
He raised the candle, which only had an inch of light left, and walked cautiously to the door, just in time to see two beady little eyes peeking in from underneath. He barely had time to register the eyes when an entire furry body snaked its way inside his chamber, flat against the ground.
G yelped and stepped back. (He definitely did not scream like a little girl.)
Once it passed the doorframe, the creature seemed to puff itself back into shape, just as G grabbed the nearest thing he could chuck at it. A pillow. He took aim and threw it, but the little rodent dodged.
It was too long to be a mouse, or a rat, but too short to be . . . what other kind of rodent was there? It looked like a cat and a snake had a baby together.
G stalked over to the thing and stomped his foot near it.
“Go away, you scruffy squirrel!”
The creature shied away from his foot, and he stomped again, in the direction of the door. “Shoo! There’s nothing to see here! Go on out the way you came in.”
But the rodent made no move toward the door. Instead, it scurried over to the bed, and scampered up the hanging tassels to the bedcovers and then to the head of the bed, where it nestled itself down on top of one of the pillows.
“Get off, you nasty rat!” G grabbed one of the books he had discarded and raised it above his head.
At this, the rodent sprang to attention, on all fours, long tail fluffed out. G waved the book as a threatening move, and the rodent did the strangest thing. It moved its head in a side-to-side motion, mirroring the motion of the book, its beady eyes wide and fixated on the tome.
G jerked the book forward about an inch, and the rodent flinched.
“All right, let’s come to an agreement.” G gently lowered the book to the bed, and that’s when the rodent did something even stranger. It scurried over to the book and nestled on top of it, like a mama bird would nestle over her eggs.
“Wait. Jane?” G said.
The rodent made a nodding motion.
“Jane?” he said again.
The rodent nodded again, this time in a more exaggerated way.
“Jane. You’re a . . . a . . . rat.”
Jane froze, and then darted frantically around the bed, then around the room, then scaled the bedpost and darted in and out of the tassels. G was worried she would do something crazy like hurl herself off the bed to her death.
“Wait! Wait. You’re not a rat. I only said rat because . . . well, I wasn’t thinking. But you’re not a rat.”
She froze on top of the bedposts, waiting expectantly.
She wanted him to tell her what she was.
“You’re a . . . a . . . well, it’s actually something I’ve not seen maybe ever. But you have fur—beautiful fur,” he added when she started shaking. “And two lovely eyes, four strong, if tiny, legs—but not too tiny,” he added again. “Can you please come down from there before I continue?”
She stamped her foot before climbing down the poster. He could almost hear her huffing. Lord, it was so obvious she was Jane. How had he not known the second her beady eyes appeared under the door?
She settled herself on the bed and he sat down next to her. He was tempted to pet her as he would a dog, but he resisted. She might find that demeaning.
He faced her.
“Okay, so you are a . . . a . . . an E∂ian,” he said, opting for the safest reference to her appearance. “I don’t suppose you’re a typical E∂ian who can change back and forth at will; otherwise, you would’ve changed back to tell me who you were yourself.” He paused. “I know that sounded very roundabout, but my meaning is, you can’t control the change, can you?”
She nodded.
“Yes, you can’t control the change? Or yes, you can?” He realized how stupid the questions w
ere. “Never mind. I’ll phrase it this way. Can you control the change?”
She shook her head.
“All right. We are getting somewhere. Although, very slowly, and I worry about how quickly the sun will soon be rising. So what are we going to do?” He sighed. “If only we had a horse.”
If hedgehogs or badgers could look exasperated, Jane did. She jumped off the bed and scurried to the door and went under it and out, then under it and back in.
G smacked his head. “Right! We have something better than a horse. We have a . . . weasel?”
Jane rolled over and played dead.
“Not a weasel, my lady, but whatever you are, I am catching your meaning. You can sneak in and out and around the tower. And possibly steal a key?”
She nodded.
“And bring the key here, and we’ll unlock the door, descend the stairs, take the guard at the bottom by surprise, knock him out, steal his sword to dispatch any other guards we may come across, go to the stables, steal a horse, and head for the hills.”
She nodded again, and this time did a scurry about the bed that sort of resembled a happy dance.
“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? The way you explain it, I must say, it sounds very convoluted.”
Jane didn’t stick around to argue. She scampered out the door (which involved flattening herself in a move that defied physics) and left G pacing and waiting. And waiting and pacing. And then pacing and waiting some more. All the while, looking out the window for signs of dawn. If Jane didn’t return in time, escape would be impossible. He wouldn’t be able to fit out the door.
Maybe his captors didn’t know about the daylight curse, and if Jane’s plan didn’t work, the sheer bulkiness of his physique would delay the whole burning-at-the-stake thing. Or maybe they did know, and they would come to fetch him sooner than the sunrise.
“Hurry, my lady,” he whispered as he paced and waited. “Please hurry.”
Eventually, he heard the soft clinging of metal far away, and it got closer and closer and G imagined a badger carrying a set of keys up a flight of stone stairs. He went and stood by the door, and soon enough, Jane appeared underneath.
She dropped a set of keys at his feet and nudged them as if she were in a hurry.
He snatched them up and wondered if her getaway wasn’t exactly clean.
It wasn’t. He heard footsteps charging up the stairwell.
Only, there were at least ten keys on the ring.
“Which one?” he muttered. He shoved the first one in the lock and jangled it about. No luck.
As he tried the second, Jane climbed up his pants and shirt and traversed across his arm as if to add urgency to the situation.
“I’m going as fast as I can!”
Third key. The lock didn’t budge.
The footsteps got closer and closer.
Fourth key. Nothing.
Jane dug her tiny claws into his wrist.
“You’re not helping,” G pointed out.
The guard was just outside the door. “Where are you, ye little rat!”
Jane dug her claws in again.
“Don’t worry, my sweet. He didn’t mean it.”
The fifth key did the trick. The lock clicked. All three of them heard it. Just as the guard charged the heavy wooden door, G pulled it wide open. The guard fell in and G struck him on the head with the bedpost. The guard crumpled to the floor, unmoving, but breathing.
“Quick!” G whisked Jane up to his shoulder and grabbed the guard’s sword.
As he crept down the stairs, it occurred to him that as a weasel, she could’ve saved herself and left him to die. Again.
But when the time came, she didn’t. Again.
This was the perfect time of night to escape the Tower of London, mostly because it was the time with the fewest number of guards, and the ones on duty were either exhausted or sneaking sips from a hidden flask.
Nevertheless, G and Jane ran into three guards. After all, they were royal prisoners. They couldn’t expect to make it to the stables completely unhindered.
The first guard G dispatched quickly in a move that Jane would probably describe as elegant swordsmanship, but he knew was really the result of the sword slipping from his sweaty hand. As he lunged to retrieve it before it hit the ground, he plunged the sword through the heart of a guard who was just rounding the corner.
The second encounter was not so graceful. The guard raised his sword and his other hand in a fighting stance, and G did the same, hoping it wasn’t obvious he’d skipped out on half of his childhood fencing lessons in favor of playing his favorite rhyming game with one of his nannies.
The two stood there for a long time, staring, preparing for what? G wondered. Attack/counterattack? Someone to give the go-ahead?
Jane, impatient with the stare down, scampered off G’s shoulder, across the floor to the guard, up his leg, and inside his shirt.
The guard did some strange jerky motions, not unlike a young child learning the famed estampie dance from Spain. G used the distraction to dispatch the man, making sure to aim his sword away from any bulky parts where Jane might be.
The third guard came along, saw the bleeding second guard, looked at Gifford with his sword raised (a formidable sight, if one wasn’t aware of his sword skills), and took off running.
G scooped Jane up and sprinted away as well. He started toward the stables where he’d first been held.
“We must hurry,” he said, trying not to imagine what he looked like, talking to the hedgehog on his shoulder. “That one will probably sound an alarm. We need a horse.”
The little rodent dug her claws into his shoulder.
“Yes, yes, but we need one that stays a horse. Especially if soldiers will be chasing us soon.”
He opened the stable door as quietly as possible, backed inside, looking for any pursuers, and when there were none, he shut the door, turned around, and nearly ran into the pointy end of a man’s sword.
The sword’s owner was a tall man with a beard and a uniform, but not the soldier kind of uniform. More like the hired-help kind.
G put his hand on his rat in an automatic protective motion.
“Please,” he said. But before he could go on, the man lowered his sword.
“Are you Gifford?”
G didn’t know if he should try to deny his identity, but there was no point. He nodded.
“Where’s the queen?” the man said.
“I’m sorry, who are you?”
The man pushed by him and opened the door a crack, peeked out, and then shut it again.
“Where’s the queen?” he said again.
“I’m afraid you won’t believe me if I tell you,” G responded.
“Try me.”
G took Jane off his shoulder—she was trembling—and cradled her in his arms. “She’s here.”
The man’s scowl softened, and he leaned forward with a smile. “Ah! She’s a wee ferret. She’s a beau’iful thing.”
“Ferret!” G exclaimed. “That’s what you are, my dear, a ferret.” He’d heard of the creatures, but he’d never seen one. “See? So much better than a rat.”
The man grabbed G’s arm and pulled him toward the stables. “We’d best be getting you on your way, if you have any hope of escaping.”
“Who are you?” G asked again. “Are you the one who slid the letter under my door?”
The man nodded. “Name’s Peter Bannister. I’m the royal kennel master. I was loyal to King Edward. Sent my daughter to protect him, but a lot of good that did.”
“Protect him? From what? ‘The Affliction’?”
Peter opened one of the stalls and hoisted a saddle onto the steed inside. “From the likes of your dirty father. The king never had ‘the Affliction.’”
G stood still with his mouth open in surprise.
“There’s no time to explain. Get on yer horse. Follow my daughter. She’ll lead you safely away.”
While G mounted the horse (w
ith Jane on his shoulder), Peter disappeared down toward the end of the stables and out the door that led to the kennels. He returned moments later with a beautiful Afghan hound.
“There’s a good girl,” he said, ruffling the dog’s fur. “Follow Petunia, my lord. She’ll help you.”
“I thought you said we were to follow your daughter.”
Just then a horn blew, and then another. Peter’s eyes went wide. “Go!”
He threw open the stable doors and then G and Jane and their horse and Petunia-the-dog galloped away into the night.
PART TWO
(In Which We Throw History Out the Window)
Midlogue
Hey, there! It’s us, your friendly neighborhood narrators. We just wanted to take a break for a minute to tell you something important: up until now, what we’ve shown you has been loosely based on what we’ve been able to uncover in our research, filling in the blanks where needed.
But from this point on, dear reader, we are going to go deep, deep, abyss-to-the-inner-crust-of-the-earth deep into the stuff the historians don’t want you to know about, the stuff they will go to extreme lengths to hide. (Because can you imagine the cost and hassle of rewriting all of the history books?) We’ve traversed the great plains of Hertfordshire, spelunked the dark tunnels of Piccadilly, hiked the rolling hills of the Cotswolds searching for the descendants of our lovers and the poisoned king, and we have compiled what we so delicately refer to as . . . THE TRUTH. (Because of the danger, we considered changing our names. But we didn’t. Still, we sleep with swords under our pillows.)
If the truth of what happened to our heroes and heroine scares you—and God’s teeth, it should scare you—do not venture past this point.
But if you are a bucker of the system, a friend of truth, an ally of love, and a believer in magic, then read on.
NINETEEN
Edward
“Take that, you lily-livered scut!” Gracie shouted, swinging her sword.
Edward sidestepped the blow in the nick of time. He puffed out his chest. “That’s King Lily-Livered Scut to you.”
She laughed. “Yes, Sire,” she said. “Of course. How could I forget?”