“And the White Tower is better?”
“Forgive me, your Grace, I cannot think to guess at the prince’s motivation for his decision. We can have someone escort it over immediately.”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
The man looked to me like I weren’t supposed to speak. “My lady—”
“No,” I said. “We will escort it there immediately.”
“My lords—”
“I wouldn’t contradict her,” Winchester warned.
I turned to Margaret, kissing her cheek. “Go in and rest. Get settled. We will return very soon.”
She nodded, looking to Winchester, and I nodded to Allan.
Allan came over. “Stay with her,” I told him.
He dismounted with a gallant smile. “I have just the song to cure a lovesick lady,” he told her. She frowned at this.
I took Allan’s horse. “I don’t know if de Clare is here yet,” I told them, “but Allan, do not allow an audience with her if he is.”
Allan nodded once to me.
I mounted the horse without aid, and Winchester and Rob did the same.
“One of our knights will lead you—” the man started.
“I am familiar with the White Tower’s location,” I told him.
He didn’t speak more.
Rob sidled up next to me. “You don’t have to come,” he told me. “We can do it.”
Glaring at him, I said, “I’m coming. For Heaven’s sake, I put on a dress and you lot think I’m a girl.”
Winchester frowned at me. “I confess, my lady, I often don’t understand you at all.”
Rob took my hand and flipped it over, kissing the palm. “Woman, maybe. Girl, never.”
I shook my head with a smile.
David nodded once to me, solemn. “My lady, we should go. It’s already late and as you remember, London can be . . . rough.”
Rob glanced at me at that, more questioning, watching me like there were more secrets he wanted to peer into. “Let’s go,” he allowed. I nodded to David.
We left the palace with the carriage, taking the road along the river. The city were bright with lights and dark with the shadows that clung to the edges of them to our left, and out on the right, the river stretched wide, still and deep, never showing its dark secrets or the ways it moved under the surface. Breathing in deep, it weren’t the lush green of the forest; there were smoke and mold, too many bodies and wet.
I looked at Rob, trying to fill my mind with forest and ocean and sun instead, all the things I saw in his eyes and his face and his hair.
The White Tower were almost full dark, but for a lantern above the wooden staircase leading to the elevated door. The gate were shut, and a guard only appeared when we came close.
“The Earl of Winchester and the Earl and Lady Huntingdon,” David said to the guard. “We’re here to contribute to the king’s ransom.”
The knight looked us over and nodded to us, opening the gate.
At this signal, ten knights came out of the keep, and David approached one as we all dismounted. “We have silver for the ransom,” he told him.
The knight looked at David but didn’t respond.
“Yes, sir, we will take care of it,” said another knight, and David turned to him.
David frowned, listening to his accent. “French, sir?” he asked.
“Oui,” the knight answered. “Prince John called for us from France—I believe so more of his own knights could defend the queen mother.”
David nodded. “Very well. Yes, empty the carriage.”
The French knight bowed his head in agreement.
“We need the amounts—we have Eleanor’s record but not yours,” the French knight said, nodding toward a little man with his head out the door.
Rob nodded, and we went up the staircase. Inside, we didn’t go up to my former rooms, but down, into the bottom of the keep. In a large room there were near fifty chests, arranged neat behind a small desk where the man recorded our sums before going out to the carriage.
I went over to the chests, chills running up my arms. It were a grand fortune, to be sure.
It were even enough of a fortune to steal the throne of England from my father and place Prince John on it instead.
We didn’t speak until we had unloaded our contribution and left the walls of the White Tower. Even then, we were silent for many moments more, our horse’s hooves loud on the road.
“French,” I said finally. “He had Frenchmen guarding English money.”
“It doesn’t bode well,” David agreed.
“If you needed to raise an army to steal an English crown, where’s the first place you would go?” I asked, shaking my head.
“France,” Winchester said. “Especially if you’re the son of Eleanor of Aquitaine.” I nodded.
“The time doesn’t work out,” Rob agreed. “If Prince John sent for them when the queen mother was attacked, they would barely be boarding a ship by now, not guarding the silver for weeks already.”
I glanced back at the White Tower, formidable and tall, its pale gray stone bright with only the moon upon it. “Then Prince John already has stolen King Richard’s ransom. And we need to steal it back.”