“Oh, I’m a girl,” Katherine said. She looked down at her clothes. “I just … uh …”
“We’re travelers from a foreign land,” Jonah said quickly. He felt like grinning at his own brilliance. “That’s why we’re dressed so strangely. We must look really freaky to you.”
All five monks looked at him blankly. “Freaky” must not be a fifteenth-century word.
Jonah went on, trying to cover his mistake.
“We came to London for the coronation,” he said. He had another flash of brilliance. “But we were surprised when we arrived this morning. …” He tried to make his voice sound innocently confused. “We had heard that the new king was a young boy, Edward the Fifth? But now we hear the crowds cheering for Richard the Third. Who is this Richard? What happened to Edward?”
The big-bellied monk narrowed his eyes.
“You are a foreigner and you dare to question our ways?” he asked.
Jonah took a step back, bumping into Chip and Alex again.
“Oh, we’re not questioning anything,” Katherine said quickly. “You can have whoever you want as king.”
The monks continued to look at her as if she’d suddenly appeared from Mars. Jonah realized they wouldn’t take anything she said seriously.
“It’s just … it’s just …,” he began. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Alex shoved Jonah aside.
“We’re just attempting to comprehend your ways,” he said, holding his hands out in front of him, like someone trying to show he wasn’t carrying any weapons. “’Tis humility to know one’s own ignorance, is it not? ‘The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.’”
“So true,” one of the monks murmured. “So true.”
“Well, you know, that’s a quote from Shakesp …” A panicked look spread over Alex’s face. “Uh, never mind,” he muttered.
Jonah guessed that meant Shakespeare wasn’t famous yet. Maybe he hadn’t even been born.
The oldest-looking monk—a bald man with bushy eyebrows—stepped forward.
“I’ll give you some advice, since you appear to be innocent fools,” he said. “It’s never wise to question the circumstances of a king’s ascension whilst he yet sits on the throne. A short memory can be a gift.”
Now, what did that mean? Jonah really needed a better translator. “Ascension” means … what? “Rising”? What’s that got to do with kings? Oh. Rising to become king?
“But Edward the Fifth was king,” Chip said in a hard, unyielding voice. “What happened to Edward the Fifth? Does he not yet live?”
Okay, so now I need a translator for Chip, too, Jonah thought. “Does he not yet live?” would be the same as … uh, let’s see … “Isn’t he still alive?”
The old monk glanced over his shoulder, as if afraid of being overheard.
“Dead or alive, it matters not,” he said softly. “He is king no more.”
“‘It matters not’? ‘It matters not’?” Chip repeated. His face was so red suddenly he looked like he might explode. “How can it not matter if a king is alive or dead?”
One of the younger monks let out a snort of laughter.
“That’s like one of those riddles they ask us,” he said in an overly loud bumpkin’s voice. “Even I know the answer to that one. Being alive or dead don’t matter if he’s not going to be king, neither way.” He chuckled again, at the apparently stunning possibility that he might be wiser than the strangely dressed “foreigners.” Then he stopped and looked back anxiously at the older monk. “Of course, his soul would be in heaven if he was dead.”
One of the other monks, a tall, thin man with ears that stuck out like jug handles, leaned in conspiratorially.
“See, what happened was, they found out the boy’s parents hadn’t even been married,” he said, whispering gleefully, like this was the juiciest gossip he’d ever heard.
“They were too!” Chip retorted instantly. He sprang forward, his hands balled up into fists, like he intended to start throwing punches at the monks. Jonah grabbed his arms, trying to hold him back.
“How would you know, if you are foreigners who only arrived this morning?” the old monk asked, pursing his lips thoughtfully.
“It’s … it’s what we heard,” Jonah said, struggling with Chip.
Katherine began tugging on Chip’s arm too, and that helped some. Jonah wished that Alex would help as well, but he was just standing there muttering, “Not married? Not married?”
“Well,” the jug-eared monk said, lowering his voice again. “I don’t know when you heard that, but Dr. Ralph Shaw preached on June twenty-second, two whole weeks ago, that Edward the Fourth was pre-contracted with another woman before he married Elizabeth Woodville. So none of their children are legitimate. So of course Edward the Fifth couldn’t inherit the throne.”
Chip stopped struggling. His face instantly went from furious red to ghostly pale.
“People heard this?” he whispered. “People believe this?”
Katherine stopped tugging on Chip’s arm and began patting it comfortingly.
“That’s crazy,” she said. “Even if, uh, Edward’s father thought about marrying someone else first, that shouldn’t change anything about who he ended up marrying. Or about Edward being king.”
The old monk frowned at Katherine.
“I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from,” he said in a tone that implied that she must be from someplace awful. “But here marriage is a sacred rite. Do you take the sacraments lightly? Do you mock the sanctity of holy matrimony?” His voice was getting louder and louder, more enraged. “Are you even Christian?”
How had it come to this? Jonah wondered. One minute they were listening to gossip about people getting engaged and married, and now this old monk was towering over them, glaring, shaking his finger at them.