The Plague

by Joanne Dahme

  It was then, that I spied Sir Andrew as he stepped from behind a cluster of boulders on the beach. A number of soldiers who had accompanied us on our journey to Castile flanked him. His white hair stood out against his dark green cloak like a gull floating on the ocean. Unwittingly, I waved. Yet he did not wave back. He seemed to be squinting at something over our heads.

  I paused on a step to look up, to see Gracias pull his sword from his belt, his back to us as he blocked the top stair. He kept his sword poised in the air as he spoke to someone out of my line of sight. I knew it had to be the prince.

  I could not hear Gracias’s words, but his manner was calm, as if he were reasoning with the prince that it was best to release us. I assumed the prince was conversing with Gracias when the minstrel stood attentively, almost respectfully, as he nodded as if in agreement.

  Is the prince really going to let us go? I was afraid to hope.

  Gracias then lowered his sword and turned to the sea, this time giving one nod to us, to Sir Andrew, I supposed, that it was all right—that the prince had promised Gracias our safety.

  We were nearly on the beach, joy barely beginning to fill my stomach, when I heard the scream of an arrow as it cruelly rent the air. I knew it hit its mark, as its course was instantaneously silenced. I turned as I heard Gracias inhale sharply and I could not stop myself from crying out as the realization of betrayal twisted the features of his face. He dropped his sword before he tumbled down the steps, his bells jingling as his body hit each stair.

  “Gracias!” George and I screamed in unison as his body came to rest, sprawling across the stairs at a point midway to the beach.

  “We must help him, Nell!” George then cried at me, pushing me away as he lurched toward the steps, as if he knew I would try to stop him. But I was quick and grabbed him by his sleeve. I did not want George to be the Black Prince’s next target.

  I looked to Sir Andrew to do something, and for a moment he appeared stricken. But just as quickly, all emotion was wiped from his face.

  The words that came out of his mouth pierced my heart. I turned to see the Black Prince at the top of the stairs, a bow in his hands.

  “We must take them back, my lord, and try them for treason,” Sir Andrew yelled as the prince raised the bow again, placing the arrow’s feathered tail in the tightly drawn cord.

  The prince did not move, but kept his sight trained on us.

  “Don’t kill them, my lord!” Sir Andrew implored. “They are more valuable to us alive, as the king will need to see with his own eyes that it is truly Nell that still lives. Let them serve us as lesson to anyone who would dare pose as the royal family.” Sir Andrew glanced at us, then back to the prince.

  I knew that Sir Andrew was never rash. Instead he usually trod each decision deep into the dirt as he walked his worry circles, but despite his anxious heart, he was able to buy us some time by appealing to the prince’s vanity. Even if I was an imposter, serving at the prince’s pleasure, he knew the prince would be pleased to make me suffer for my audacity in thinking that I could masquerade as the princess without him. It would not matter to the prince that I had protested the guise ever since the princess’s death.

  The prince lowered the bow and cocked his head to survey the scene before him. A smile skulked across his bruised, thin face. His eyes became slits.

  “Good work, Sir Andrew,” he called from his perch. He was standing now in a regal pose usually reserved for portraits, despite the stains on his cloak and tunic and the wildness of his hair. “I should have guessed that you would have been one step ahead of me as we untangled this conspiracy. I will tell the king you served him well as we send these three through Traitor’s Gate.” His smile was gone, his face was grave, and for the first time I could remember, he looked at me with true hatred in his eyes.

  the tower

  ON OUR JOURNEY HOME we did not have straw pallets or blankets to soften the unforgiving, splintery deck of the hold. The Black Prince made sure of that. We each had an ankle in shackles, giving us enough space to stand or pace to keep ourselves warm and to keep us alive until we reached the Tower. The prince had stripped me of the princess’s dress, which I had dirtied and torn during our flight through the woods. I was wearing some servant’s cast-off tunic now. Henry had lost his armor and sword. Only George still wore the worn black tunic that he had donned at the beginning of our journey.

  We shared the hold with the princess’s numerous trunks. When George and Henry slept during the day, I found comfort in touching her things.They made me feel one with the princess again. How different all of our lives would be if the princess had lived. Is life on earth ever just?

  During our first dark night in the hold, for our nights were black as we were not provided torches to hold back the rats or sea spirits, George used his healing power to bring Henry back to health.We held hands as we listened to George hum tunes that reminded me of the ocean’s sigh as our ship sliced through its surface—not quite living tunes but not of the dead either.When George was finished, I could hear the rise and fall of Henry’s chest, the breaths he took to keep alive.

  He called out my name once in a fever. “Nell.” I squeezed his hand until he quieted.

  “I think he cares for you, Nell,” George said. I caught the glisten of his eyes in the dark.

  “And I for him, George,” I replied, feeling a rush of warmth in my face. I was glad that it was dark. “He was a bit cocky at first, but he seemed to come around,” I noted quietly.

  But George did not know how to shy away from the truth.

  “All soldiers are boastful, Nell. It’s their way. But Henry decided to stay with us and protect us. Just like a parent or a betrothed would,” he said softly.

  A betrothed. The notion seemed ridiculous, as we had spent our last weeks running from such a promise, but the idea of Henry in such a role surprisingly touched my heart.

  “Do you think much about our parents, George?” I asked, as we had finally had the time to call our past to mind. In the darkness, without other people or things to demand the attention of our senses, I could see my mother’s and father’s faces perfectly.

  “I talk to them, Nell. All the time. It’s the only way I can bear their absence. I think it is they who enable me to heal people as a way to heal my own heart.”

  I held back a sob as I pulled him close to me. I had been wrong in believing that I had carried the burdens of our past alone.

  The next morning I was glad to see the color in Henry’s face restored and the combat return to his brown eyes. As I stared at his full face, I was surprised that I had not realized before quite how handsome he was. George gave me a shy smile and looked away. But later, as the days passed and we neared the end of our ten-day journey, I wondered why he made Henry whole again. To better face his death?

  I had asked him this question a few days later, just before dawn, while George was still sleeping on one of several old cloaks that Sir Andrew had found stored on the ship for the king’s army. Sir Andrew had been surprised, and I think pleased, to see that we had refused to pilfer any of the princess’s possessions for our own warmth or comfort. I awoke to find Henry sitting against the hull, a cloaked wrapped around his shoulders. He was staring at me.

  There was a question I wanted to ask but I held back. I was nervous and shy when it came to my feelings for Henry, ever since George and I had spoken of him as one of us.

  I did not get up, but instead wrapped my own cloak around my body as I looked into his face.

  “Henry,” I asked softly. “You are a soldier. What will happen to us when we reach London? I fear for George . . . and for us,” I added with a whisper.

  He tilted his head quizzically. The ends of his tangled brown hair touched his shoulders. I could see his eyes glistening in the graying darkness.

  “I’m not quite sure, Nell,” he replied. He breathed in deeply, causing his shoulders to rise and fall. “The soldiers that I have seen arrested for treason arrived quickly o
n Tower Hill. I don’t believe that they received much of a trial before their hangings, at least that is what the other soldiers told me.” He turned his head away from my vision for a moment, before his gaze returned to my own. “I never had much of a stomach for those sort of things. But you and George are not soldiers,” he added quickly. “The king should grant you an audience.”

  “Let us pray that you are right, Henry. The king is indeed a good man.”

  We both went silent, until I could no longer contain the question that nagged at my heart.

  “Why are you with us, Henry? Why did you risk your life to be with George and me?” Much of the question I mumbled into my cloak. I was suddenly shamed by my presumption of his feelings, despite what George believed.

  But then he gave me a warm smile. “You are beautiful, Nell,” he said, looking into my eyes in such a way as if it were safe to do so for the first time.

  “And you seemed ... different ...in an exciting way,” he added. “Not just because you looked like the princess, but because you were so independent, or maybe it was stubborn, in the way you protected George.” His voice lost its gravity and he hugged his knees to his chest like a boy. “When we went chasing George through Portsmouth, I realized that this was something that a real princess would never do. But a real girl with a brave and noble heart would. She would trust her heart and not be bound by the rules of royalty.”

  I knew my face had flushed, but the warmth I felt throughout my body was agreeable. “I am not royal, Henry, as you know too well. George and I were nothing but paupers when the king found us.”

  Now it was as if a shadow crossed his face. He leaned forward to grab my hands from beneath my cloak, pulling me up so that our faces were close. “This was the other thing, Nell. That day . . .when I came with the death cart to take your parents away. I was dead in my own heart then,” he whispered, peering into my face, as if to find any signs of horror or fear.

  “Until George kicked me.” He paused and directed a gentle smile at George’s sleeping form. “I hadn’t been thinking of the bodies that we carried away as people. I couldn’t,” he insisted. “Not if I was going to keep my wits about me. But then you and George insisted on following me, insisted on knowing that your parents would be properly taken care of . . . ”

  “But the king interrupted us,” I reminded him.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But he did not calm my heart, which you and George battered to life again. I was not much older than you that day, but it was then that I became a soldier for the king and pledged to look after all in his household.”

  I was not sure if the shock in my heart showed on my face. Henry had become a soldier to look after George and me, ever since that incredible day in London?

  “Yes,” he said, nodding as he read my face. “I was alone, too, and you both managed to capture my soul.”

  We grieved for Gracias, too, but Henry felt the most guilt. He said he was jealous and suspicious of Gracias, probably more jealous than anything else, he admitted. I did not trust Gracias either, I confessed. He was strange and large and had wild hair like an animal. He had a noble heart, George added, and then we went silent. It was curious how easily we bared our hearts in such a hostile and doomed-filled setting.Yet we knew our time was waning.

  Sir Andrew brought our food during that first week—brown bread and water and porridge that he scrounged from the cook’s kettle. He would pace in his circles around us as he tried to divine a solution to our dilemma.

  “I cannot argue against the Black Prince, Nell,” he would say sadly, and continue walking around us in his dizzying circles. “I must find another way to show the king that you are innocent.”

  “I know, Sir Andrew,” I replied, trying my best to be like a princess—magnanimous and brave to the end. Only days later, when he made the same plea, I did not hold back. We were sailing to our deaths. What did I have to gain by maintaining a noble silence?

  “It’s not fair, Sir Andrew!” I cried. “It is the prince who has maligned the name of the Plantagenets!”

  He looked at me sadly as if I was a small child. “The king has always cared for you, Nell. We must pray that when he sees you, he will also see into your heart.”

  Henry nodded hopefully. “You do wear your goodness on your face, Nell, just as George keeps it on the tip of his tongue. Let us pray that the Black Prince’s words do not place a veil in front of the king’s vision.”

  The boat pulled back and forth, back and forth, in rhythm with the two oarsmen who kept their steady pace on the Thames. Their faces were hard, cut by lines made by the sun and lifelong labor. Their beards and hair were rough. One growled that we best not talk.

  The prince had wasted no time in disposing of us and set us in a ferryboat before our ship had even docked. Our hands were shackled. He spared us the hoods, unlike the poor man that I had seen from the docks before we boarded the ship to Bordeaux three month back.We too were on a final journey to Traitor’s Gate. I remember thinking that at least in Castile, I would not have to worry about George being sent to the Tower for his childlike ways I feared he would never lose.The simple truth was always on George’s tongue. But now we were being taken to the Tower on someone’s lie, a royal lie that would be impossible to protest.

  It was drizzling, and the cool mist on my face chilled me.These gray, damp November days in London number more than those blessed with sun. From my vantage point on the Thames, I did not see the normal throng of people moving about their business along the banks of the river. The tradesmen should be rolling their wooden barrels of mead to the pubs or carrying their baskets of fruit and fish, or the women selling still-warm loaves of bread from their tunic aprons. And the children of the docks were usually everywhere, bursting between the alleys of the houses and shops that lined the embankment.

  But not today. I barely spied a soul. Even the river was remarkably empty—a large open pond without the traffic of fishing and ferryboats. All I could hear was the cry of the gulls.

  The gulls don’t get the king’s plague, I realized.

  So the Black Death had reached London.

  I was exhausted.Terror can be overwhelming. I looked into George’s blue eyes and they were oddly vacant. His blond hair was matted with the dirt and sweat of our past weeks.

  “George,” I whispered but he did not look at me. He was already far away.

  But Henry did and his eyes were full of anger. He was restless and kept shifting his weight in the boat. One of the oarsmen slapped him.

  “Stop that! You will turn us all over!” he yelled.

  And we will all drown, I thought. No doubt a nicer fate than the one that awaited us.

  All too quickly, we approached the tunneled entrance to Traitor’s Gate. It looked like the dark mouth of the river sucking us in. Our oarsmen paused, allowing the river to ease us beneath the raised spiked gate.

  Two soldiers, knee-deep in water, stood on the other side of the river wall and used their hands to guide our boat into the entry of the arched stone cell built on top of the castle’s moat. It was cold and damp in this three-walled room, and I swore I could smell the fear of the hundreds of souls who had made this same journey before us. I wondered if our fear, too, would cling to the air long after we left this place.

  George made a nervous sound and I grabbed his hand, the chain on my wrist slapping against my leg. Henry said nothing, but his eyes were shining as he looked around the room, searching for a way out. No one had yet to escape the Tower once they passed through Traitor’s Gate.

  The soldiers pushed the boat to the set of stone stairs that led out of the moat to St. Thomas Tower and the second set of walls that surrounded the castle.The white-stoned Tower loomed beyond those walls, and the banner of the Plantagenets flew from each of the Tower’s four turrets. This is where we were to spend our first night—in the dungeon of the king’s keep.

  “Out of the boat, girl, and up the steps,” one of the soldiers ordered. He barely had a wisp of a beard.
I stood up shakily, as my legs had been cold and were numb. One of the oarsmen impatiently pulled me up by the elbow.

  “Don’t touch her!” Henry yelled, jumping up and causing the boat to rock.

  One of the oarsmen cursed.

  “Too late to be the hero, boy,” the older soldier jeered. “Consider yourself blessed,” he added, almost thoughtfully. “At least this death will be a swift one. The pestilence can work on you for days.”

  We did not sleep that night. I kept thinking how strange it was to be locked in the dungeon of the keep—the White Tower of our king. As a favored servant of the princess, I had been given relatively free reign to roam this castle’s halls. Trying to conjure again what was now a foreign sentiment, I remembered that George and I had felt safe here. But now I felt anger and a simmering resentment of the Black Prince.

  When we had visited London with the princess, George and I had slept in the servants’ quarters of the keep—quarters reserved for those closest to the royal family, and not in the general quarters on the other side of the green. Although the treasury was off-limits to me, as the king kept the royal jewels there, I was permitted to spend as much time as I desired in the Tower’s chapel, a room that sparkled with its own multihued glass. The chapel always lifted my spirits.The only other place in the Tower that I never dared venture was the dungeon, where the cries of lonely prisoners could be heard while the rest of the castle slept. I had said many prayers for those prisoners. Who will pray for us?

  The dungeon was much smaller than our ship’s confining hold. Its cobwebbed walls seemed to lean toward us like brooding shadows, hungry to snuff out the tiniest whiff of hope. Rusty torch brackets pockmarked the walls like wounds, and thick, tarnished chains and shackles hung limply like the lifeless bodies they once held.

  A pile of old straw in one corner of the room was the only amenity. A latrine in a particularly dank corner introduced the aroma of the moat into the already stifling air. Carvings in the stone-block wall, made by the prisoners before us, were the sole entertainment. As straw was the only commodity here, we guessed that the desperate prisoners made use of their meal spoons to confirm their existence when they feared that no one would see them again. “Though some probably used their rings,” George pointed out, placing his fist against the dusty wall and mimicking how one would carefully gouge a mark into it. This was how we kept ourselves occupied, waiting for some word of our trial, as so many prisoners before us.