The 48

by Donna Hosie

  I could see what Margaret saw in Alex. Obviously. But putting me at risk like that made my blood boil.

  As for Cromwell, I hated him with every fiber of my being.

  * * *

  —

  Anne Boleyn looked regal. Her head was held high; she even smiled and acknowledged the guards. Queenly was the word Henry had used to describe Jane. Yet his wife about to die was finally being exactly that.

  But as soon as Anne was taken to her rooms—the ones that Alice had helped prepare—she collapsed. This time I could hear it. She was crying for her father and brother.

  She did not yet know that her family had forsaken her too.

  * * *

  —

  Alice arrived in the next barge, as did another four ladies-in-waiting who were shaking and crying with terror themselves. Watching from afar, I couldn’t cry out to Alice from the small window, so she had no idea I was already at the Tower. I assumed she would have been forced to come back here after the beating she took before, or perhaps she had perversely agreed to come to prove she wasn’t scared of anyone. I didn’t know, but I would get her away as soon as I could.

  * * *

  —

  16 17:49:13

  Sixteen days left. In just over two weeks’ time our countdowns would reveal a line of zeros and we would be dragged forward in time. If we weren’t near that painting, then we would disintegrate.

  I left the broken musician and went to find Alice. My assignment would go critical—according to The 48 Tenets—in two days.

  As far as I was concerned, we were already there.

  * * *

  —

  Windsor Castle had been a dank Gothic place, but the dungeons of the Tower of London were even worse. They were so claustrophobic it was as if the architects were trying to suffocate the prisoners before their execution. The stone steps were steep and circular, and the windowless corridors were narrow and oppressive. The queen was being kept in the far more luxurious royal apartment between two of the towers. They had been renovated just a few years earlier, so Anne’s prison was a fine one. Alice had assisted in preparing them for the queen, and she would know her way around. Our getaway had to be quick.

  * * *

  —

  I came across two yeomen near the lodgings of the Lieutenant of the Tower. They seemed scared of me and flinched back as I approached them.

  I was Cromwell’s man, as far as they were concerned.

  “There is a serving girl with the queen. Her name is Alice,” I said. “I want her.”

  The yeomen swapped looks, and without a word, one of them went into the royal apartment. It was starting to spit with rain, but it was also humid and stuffy. Looking up into the dark sky, I could feel the weight of the storm clouds starting to gather.

  “And I will require a litter back to Stepney,” I said to the yeoman still waiting. “Make sure it is done—Cromwell’s orders.”

  The yeoman nodded. “Aye, milord.”

  So this was how people got things done in this world, I thought. Get a reputation for brutality—or serving brutal people—and others will acquiesce without question.

  “Charles!”

  Alice came running down the steps, her short hair covered by a white bonnet that was untied.

  I stepped back as she moved to hug me. She let her arms drop to her sides as her face fell for a split second. She curtsied.

  “What is it, milord?” she asked.

  “Come with me.” My voice was detached, soulless. Utterly cold. I turned to the yeoman. “The litter—now.”

  “This way, milord,” he replied. And he led me and Alice away from the queen’s prison.

  The rain was falling a little harder, and the first rumble of thunder growled in the distance.

  “Come with me to Stepney,” I said in a low voice. “We’ll get Alex, get the painting, and go into hiding until this is over.”

  I could hear how dead my voice was. I barely had the stomach for living anymore.

  “What’s wrong with you, Charles?” asked Alice. She knew something was wrong—Alice always knew.

  But I shook my head. I couldn’t tell Alice what I had witnessed on Cromwell’s behalf last night. If I gave my actions a voice, then I would have to own them. My entire existence felt contaminated.

  I just kept hearing the screams.

  “Have you seen Alexander?” asked Alice.

  “Yes.”

  “We’re going to him now?”

  “Yes.”

  I wasn’t being deliberately obtuse in my replies. I just couldn’t find the will to speak. My throat was stinging.

  Why wouldn’t the screaming in my head stop?

  The guard had led us to a gate where a small black litter was waiting. It was an enclosed black box that would be carried by four people. We weren’t far from Cromwell’s Great Place. I was finished here, and I wanted to be back with Alex before nightfall.

  If he hadn’t been moved.

  Alice and I squished together on the seat, which had a red velvet cushion, stained and frayed. I wrapped my traveling cloak around her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry for what I said to you at Greenwich,” she whispered. “And for pushing you. I was so angry.”

  “It’s forgotten. I’m sorry, too.”

  “Is Alex okay?”

  I nodded, swallowing painfully. My sore throat was getting worse.

  “What’s happened, Charlie?”

  “I did something terrible. I had no choice.”

  “It’s okay.” Alice slipped her fingers through mine, but I pulled them away. I wanted to hold her hand so badly, but my hands weren’t objects to be comforted. They were instruments of torture as much as the ties and pulleys of the rack. They had written the death sentence for a court musician whose only mistake had been to love a queen.

  “I can’t…I just…”

  “They threatened to hurt Alex again, didn’t they?”

  “Aramis warned me this could happen,” I replied, pushing my head back against the wood and closing my eyes. We were jiggling left to right to left. We were on the move.

  “Warned you what would happen?” asked Alice.

  “That Alex and I being paired up was a bad idea. That we were too close and others would take advantage of that.”

  “Don’t let what Aramis said would happen define what’s actually going on here,” said Alice. “Don’t let them have that control over you, too. You are the only one who can resolve this. For you and Alex. I believe in you.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at Alice. “How can you still have hope, after everything we’ve seen and done?”

  “Because once you’ve lost hope, you have nothing,” she whispered. “And I’m not going to let them leave me with nothing.”

  Alice allowed me to trace a line down her face with my fingers, from her hairline to her jaw. Her skin was cold and dry. Her lips parted enough to let me see her tongue resting behind her teeth. She had the longest eyelashes of anyone I had ever met.

  “I’m not going to let you play me, Charlie,” replied Alice. “You need to make a choice.”

  “I’m not playing you.”

  “I still love you—you know I do.”

  “Don’t use that word.”

  “Love, love, love,” mocked Alice, and she crossed her arms in front of her chest.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to man up and start owning your feelings,” snapped Alice. “And finish this. Ask yourself, Charlie, do you have what it’s gonna take to get out of this mess?”

  “Keep your voice down, Alice.”

  “You don’t, do you?”

  “In case you haven’t been paying attention, I’ve been trying to keep you, Alex, and myself alive. So yeah, I’d say I have what it
takes!” To make my point, I flung my arm wide out the litter window—and with such force that the curtain went flying out with it.

  Alice burst out laughing and then quickly stuffed her knuckles into her mouth as the litter rocked.

  “You’re hopeless,” I muttered, straining my eyes to see through the small vertical gap to the outside world.

  “I’m sorry, Charlie,” replied Alice. “It’s just so good to see you smile.”

  Her words immediately sobered me.

  “You didn’t kill that boy, Charlie.”

  So Alice already knew what I had done to Mark Smeaton.

  “No—but I’ve set him up to be killed,” I replied.

  “If the need came, could you do worse than what you’ve done?”

  “Worse than torture someone? The only thing that’s worse is to kill someone.”

  “And could you?”

  I inhaled through my nostrils. We were traveling adjacent to the Thames, east toward Stepney. The wind was picking up, and with it, the stench of the sewage-filled river. The smell made my eyes water.

  “If Alex or you were threatened, then yes, I could do worse.”

  “Really? Look me in the eyes and tell me you could be the assassin you’ve been trained to be.”

  I could see myself reflected in Alice’s dark irises, which reminded me of Anne Boleyn’s eyes. The reflection was a tired, haggard face I no longer recognized.

  “I could do worse.”

  Alice’s thumb dragged against my bottom lip, pulling it down.

  “I want to kiss you,” I said.

  “Then do it,” she whispered.

  I murmured something incomprehensible as her lips met mine with an urgency that was hard and fast. Her hair was so short now my fingers couldn’t wind into it, but that made the contact between us even more frantic. I loved kissing Alice.

  I loved Alice.

  We stayed wrapped around each other in silence for the rest of the journey back to Cromwell’s house. Adrenaline and nerves about my brother’s fate combined again to create a maelstrom of rushing thoughts through my head. I played out dozens of scenarios, from finding him gone to finding him well.

  All of them ended up with Cromwell dead.

  I hated him. I hated him for what he had done to Alex, and I hated him for having so much power over me that he had turned me into the person The 48 always thought I could be. Cromwell had sped up the process like a professional.

  It ended now. Ownership of my life and death was mine—no one else’s. And even if I couldn’t see a way out, I would go down fighting for what I now truly believed in.

  * * *

  —

  I ran into Cromwell’s house and up the stairs. I couldn’t remember the location of the room that Alex had been kept in, so I threw open every door until I came to the one I recognized.

  My brother wasn’t there.

  Charles, what has that box ever done to you?”

  My brother was kicking seven hells out of a wooden box that was starting to chip and splinter. Alice was leaning over him, trying to calm him down. When he heard my voice and turned, he practically tackled me.

  “Alexander! I thought—I thought…I couldn’t find you,” he said, holding me tight.

  “Back still hurts, man,” I groaned, but I didn’t let Charlie go. Physical affection was actually starting to feel natural.

  But Charlie pulled away and ruffled my hair, sending droplets of water cascading over my shoulders onto the clothes I had been given: a long nightshirt and black slippers.

  “You look like an idiot,” he said.

  “I’m channeling my inner Ebenezer Scrooge,” I replied, clapping my hand over my mouth in mock horror. “Don’t tell The 48 I mentioned a work of…fiction for enjoyment purposes. I might get flogged…again.”

  “Don’t even joke about it,” replied Charlie.

  “They’ve actually taken pretty good care of me here,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie. “I think a couple of Cromwell’s housemaids are starting to get all maternal over me. Too bad their cooking sucks.”

  “Speaking of that bastard, do you know where Cromwell is?” asked Charlie.

  “I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” I replied. “He disappeared not long after you did. Where did you go? What were you doing? No one would tell me anything.”

  Charlie led me over to the chair by the window and sat me down in it like I was a child.

  “You deserve the truth—all of it. Keeping information from you and Alice in order to protect you both hasn’t worked. Just don’t think less of me after I’ve finished. Knowledge is power, and we’re going to reclaim it from those who have taken it away from us.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sometimes Charlie got a little lofty on me. It was best to just hear him out. So I did. I listened intently as Charlie told me everything. I knew it was everything. There was stuff that no one would willingly claim ownership of unless they were consumed with guilt. What he had done for Cromwell since I had been taken from Greenwich: the first joust; the arrest of the queen; Jane; and even witnessing the torture of Mark Smeaton. Charlie held nothing back. It was almost confessional. Once he started speaking, it was as if he couldn’t stop. I could physically see the weight of the words lifting from his shoulders. It was perversely cathartic.

  And then he got to Grinch, and my stomach lurched as if ice-cold stalactites had started to grow inside my soul.

  “She’s here? But does that mean other Assets are?” By other Assets I meant the one who really scared me.

  Like Piermont.

  “I don’t know,” replied Charlie.

  “And do we know yet why Alice was brought back here?”

  Alice shook her head. “If I knew, I would tell you, Alex. She told me it was for my protection, but we all know she puts The 48 above all else. Which means the objective of your mission will still take precedence in her mind. Over me, over any of us. That means she’s crazy dangerous. Everybody outside this little trio is.”

  “Well, Charlie,” I said. “If we’re going to get back to Greenwich, it seems we ought to leave now.”

  * * *

  —

  I stretched out and tried to stand. I had lost a lot of weight, and my muscle definition was nonexistent.

  Charlie’s jaw was set rigid as he watched me struggle. “Can you stay on a horse long enough to get back to Greenwich?” he asked.

  “Alex can ride with me,” said Alice. “I could pass for a boy with this haircut now. Just find me some different clothes.”

  “What happened to your hair, by the way?” I asked.

  “Lice,” replied Alice flatly. “And don’t look at me like that, Charlie. They’re gone. You aren’t going to catch them from kissing me. God, it’s as if I had girl-cooties or something.”

  “Look like what?” he exclaimed. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I wasn’t aware cooties discriminated against the sex of the individual they were cootying on,” I said wearily. Charlie gave me a weak smile. It was pretty pathetic, to be honest. Watching him watching me trying to joke, trying to reclaim my identity in the only way I knew how.

  “When you two have quite finished,” said Alice. “We were getting on horses and that was as far as the plan went.”

  “Right. So, Alex. Can you ride with Alice?” asked Charlie.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  The servants in Cromwell’s house didn’t try to stop us from leaving. Maybe they were used to people coming and going at all hours. Maybe they simply didn’t care enough to try. Maybe, as far as they were concerned, we were dead men riding.

  The knife pressed down on my throat. The blade was as cold as winter; it made a sound, like mice scratching behind the walls, as it scraped down my neck. If the thick arm had not been ho
lding me tightly around the waist, my legs would have given way beneath me.

  “I have told you, sir,” I begged. “I know nothing.”

  The jailer replied with five harsh words, spat with venom, that I had never heard before, but I knew they were not of foreign European lands. It reminded me of something, though. A voice, or voices, raised in alarm.

  “Where is Charles of Cleves?”

  “I know not, sir,” I pleaded, my belly paining not just with fear, but at the large fist that was pressing into it, as if this beast were attempting to push out my very soul from within.

  “He’s taken his brother. And the girl. Where are they? I’ve been watching you for weeks. You’ve been in their inner circle since day one.”

  “Please, you are hurting me. I’ll scream. I’ll—”

  The monster just laughed, a mirthless sound that chilled my very bones as he tightened his grip.

  “Cry out, then,” he snarled. Spittle landed on my neck. “But you should know by now, no one comes to rescue those who scream in the Tower. They never have, and they never will.”

  Fear such as I had never felt before was coursing through my body like a sickness. I was going to die in the Tower. I was going to die this very day.

  “I dreamt of being close to one of the men from Cleves once,” I replied, my breath ragged and short. “It was a fool’s dream. They are…”

  “They are what?”

  The jailer spun me around so I was facing him. He was tall and bald, and his face and bare chest were covered in welts and scars.

  He was the Devil—the stuff of nightmares.

  Then his fist connected with my belly. Gasping for breath, I fell to the hard stone floor. Hot tears fell between my splayed fingers.

  “They are what?” repeated the Devil. “What have you seen?”

  “I…cannot—”

  A boot connected with my shoulder. I screamed.