Rob crossed his arms. “Scarlet. Her name is Scarlet,” he snapped. He shrugged his shoulders at me. “I can’t stand hearing that name on everyone’s mouth.”
“My name doesn’t matter,” I told him. “What they call me, the words I use—they don’t matter. Our actions, and what we will do to bring the King of England home matter.” I looked at Essex. “So yes, I have a plan.”
CHAPTER
“I look terrible in this,” Allan whined.
David scowled at him. “The great trickster. I thought you could pretend to be whatever you wanted. Having difficulty pretending to be me?”
“But I look so much handsomer as me,” Allan said.
I frowned at them from the carriage seat. “You’d make a terrible knight, Allan. Try to look intimidating.”
“David’s not intimidating,” Allan said, looking at David on his horse.
“Be thankful you haven’t seen that side of me yet, Allan,” David grunted.
The gates round the White Tower came into view, and David rode forward to trot abreast of the carriage with Rob and me on the coachman’s seat. The French guards came out to greet us, looking wary.
“Open the gate,” David ordered.
“On what business?”
“We have contributions from the queen for the king’s ransom,” David said.
They opened the gate.
There were more knights now; at least thirty, ambling around. They didn’t help us as we rode the carriage close, and Rob and David hefted a chest between them. They walked it to the stairway, a wooden thing that led up to the entrance of the tower and could be rolled away if enemies approached.
The thing creaked as they went up, and I followed slow behind them.
They brought the chest into the treasury room on the lowest floor of the tower. They set the chest down and went back to repeat the task, and I stood watch over the room. The man of accounts came to me and asked the sums, and I told him.
He left, and I unlocked the chest that Rob and David had just set down.
A dirty face looked up at me. “Quick,” I told him.
The young man leapt out of the chest. I went out to the hall and Allan were there. “This way,” he told me, and he grabbed one chest while the boy grabbed another.
They disappeared into a smudge of darkness underneath the stairs.
Rob and David came down again with a chest.
I frowned. “Where are your swords?” I asked them.
“They keep hitting the stairs,” David said. “We put them in the carriage.”
Hairs raised on the back of my neck. “Hurry, then.”
Rob gave me a solemn nod, laying the chest down.
Again, one of Kate’s orphans sprang out of a chest, and he waited for Allan and the other to return, leading them down to a secret entrance in the bottom of the tower that let out onto the river.
“We call it Traitor’s Gate,” Allan had told us. “But seeing as thieves don’t have much say about it, I doubt that name will stick.”
David and Rob took as much time as they could. We had seven boys hidden in chests, and they made quick work of secreting the ransom away to the water gate and Kate’s rowboats. It were a short trip down the river to where her ship were docked.
One by one, the chests disappeared, and the sky didn’t fall upon our heads.
Rob and David dropped a chest to the floor of the treasury, and Rob kissed me, sweat heavy on his brow. “We have one more chest,” he said. “Get them ready.”
There were only two left in the treasury.
I nodded. Allan returned with three boys. Two took the chests that sat there, and one waited anxious for Rob and David’s footsteps.
I held my breath.
Long moments passed before Rob and David appeared, hefting the chest down the stairs.
The boy took it, turning under the stairs as a set of metaled boots appeared at the height of the stairs.
I pulled the door shut. “Can someone lock this?” I called.
The knight ducked so he could see us, and came downstairs, replacing the lock and inserting the key. He stood by the door.
We nodded, and started up the stairs.
The night were thick and warm, one of the first that didn’t get cooler without the sun. Summer were close, hovering, waiting to make her mark on us. To push us through another year.
I stood at the top of the stairs, and Rob’s arm came round me. He were bright and shining with sweat. David glanced at us and turned his head, trotting down the stairs.
Rob kissed me, and I tasted salt on his lips. “I love you, Scar.”
“I love you too,” I told him. “Let’s get back before anyone misses us.”
He leaned forward and touched my lips to his. It were quick and brief. A kiss that were meant to be a beginning, a start, the first of a thousand.
We hadn’t made it to the bottom of the staircase when the gate began to open.
I looked at Rob, and David.
We hadn’t asked them to open the gate yet. It were too early.
We made for the carriage. I had knives in my dress, but Rob didn’t have his sword. David didn’t either.