CHAPTER XXIII
The Queen’s household was moved back to Saint Thomas’ Tower as soon as the causeway had been cleared. Juliana had protested to the guardsmen that she should be by her husband’s side in this time of crisis, but to no avail. The Privy Council had decreed, in the name of the King, that Robert’s wife and children must stay in the Tower for their own safety until all the conspirators behind the assassination attempt had been arrested. And so they had returned to what had been intended as temporary quarters, feeling more like prisoners than guests under protection.
Coby tried to busy herself about the Queen’s apartments but there was little to do apart from sewing, listening to one of the ladies-in-waiting read, or watching the skrayling ships depart the city. She spent far too much of her time on the latter, wondering where she and Mal would take Kit if the skraylings never returned. Of course she had to get Kit out of here first, the sooner the better.
A wail came from the bedchamber. The Queen. Coby rushed up the short flight of steps.
“Your Majesty?”
Queen Juliana had sunk to the floor in a puddle of silks, and would have fallen entirely if two of her ladies had not knelt and held her up. Coby noticed the door to the Wakefield Tower stood open, and a white-faced page hovered near it, twisting his black velvet bonnet in his hands. She left the Queen to her companions and crossed to him.
“What news?” she asked in a low voice, taking him by the elbow.
“P-P-Prince Edward, madam. He’s taken sick. Naught but a summer fever, the doctor says, but–”
But the prince’s great-uncle, after whom he had been named, had likewise fallen ill and died on the cusp of adulthood. Coby glanced back at the Queen. Poor woman, to have two beloved lives hanging in the thread and no means to save either.
“Take me to my son,” she told the page.
“But–”
“Now!” she muttered, steering him across the bedchamber. “You and I can do nothing here.”
She followed him through the parlour and dining room and down the steps to the outer ward, through the gateway under the Bloody Tower and up to the green. In truth there were few easy routes from one tower to the next, as was no doubt intentional; back when the castle was an important fortress, its strength lay in making it as difficult as possible to pass from the outer curtain wall to the inner.
At the foot of the steps up to the Bloody Tower’s entrance stood a grey-haired yeoman warder. The scarlet tassels on his partizan swung wildly as he moved it to block her entrance. Odd, the little details that stood out in these moments.
“Name and business?”
Coby drew herself up to her full height, which was a good inch taller than the guard. “I am Lady Jacomina Catlyn, and I am here to see my son Christopher.”
“Sorry, madam, no one is admitted to the princes’ presence at the moment, not with fever running riot.”
“Tush, man, there is naught wrong with me, I will not infect anyone.”
The warder shrugged. “Those is my orders, madam, from the Prince of Wales hisself.”
“The prince is but a child, and sick with fever,” she said. “Besides, if everyone is so worried about him, surely he should be removed from here for his own safety?”
“Not my place to decide, madam.”
“No, of course not.” She paused. “But no doubt his uncle has been informed?”
“Couldn’t say, madam.”
Coby gave up. She was getting nowhere with this man, and if no one was allowed in or out, Kit might be safe for a while.
Kit sat in the window seat, pretending to read the opening verses of the Iliad but really gazing across the inner ward at the Beauchamp Tower. Prince Henry’s grandfather, Robert Dudley, had been imprisoned there after plotting treason, and died there too.
“What are you staring at?” asked Robin Sidney, who was sitting opposite.
“Nothing,” Kit replied.
He glanced at Prince Henry, who was playing chess with Master Weston. De Vere, who had joined them in the Bloody Tower when Edward first fell sick, put out his tongue. Kit resisted the urge to do the same back, in case Master Weston looked up and saw him.
Sidney leant forward across his book.
“Do you think Edward will haunt his tower when he dies, like the other two princes do here?”
“He’s not dead yet.” Kit whispered back. “Anyway, I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“You don’t?” Sidney’s eyes widened.
“Well, not apart from the Holy Ghost, and he’s special because he’s really God in disguise.”
“But… what about all the stories? Luke the guardsman swears he’s seen the princes at the windows, and heard them weeping.”
“Why are you two boys talking?” Master Weston snapped. “I told you to read in silence. Open your mouths again and you’ll feel my cane.”
“Etiam, magister,” they chorused.
Sidney shot Kit a sulky look, as if it had been his fault. Kit glowered back. Thankfully Master Weston was distracted from observing them by the arrival of Prince Henry’s physician, Doctor Renardi.
“Come, Your Highness, it is time for your morning treatment.”
“Do I have to?” the prince asked, looking up from the chess board.
“I am afraid so, Your Highness. You do not want to catch the summer fever like your poor brother, do you?”
Henry got up from his seat. “Of course not. Although you would make me better if I did, wouldn’t you, Renardi?”
“I would endeavour to do so, Highness. As I do now for your brother.” He gestured towards the bedchamber. When the door had closed behind them, Master Weston rose from his chair.
“I think I shall take the air for a short while,” he said to no one in particular. He carefully put all the chess pieces back in their starting positions and then left, talking to himself under his breath.
“Gone to help himself to the prince’s wine stores, more like,” de Vere said, heaving himself up from his cushion by the hearth.
“Why don’t we get treatments for the fever?” Sidney asked.
“Because we’re not princes,” de Vere replied. He lowered his voice. “Besides, what if Renardi made Edward sick, and is trying to do the same to Henry with this ‘treatment’?”
“Why would he do that?” Kit asked.
“Because he’s a foreigner. You can’t trust them, you know.”
“Catlyn’s a foreigner,” Sidney said.
“I am not,” Kit replied, though not with any conviction.
“Yes you are, the prince himself told me. Your grandmother was French, your mother is Dutch and you were born in France. That makes you a foreigner.”
“Perhaps you poisoned Edward,” de Vere said, looming over him.
“I did not.” Kit backed away from the older boy.
De Vere’s fist came flying towards him. Kit dodged, and de Vere yelped as his knuckles smashed against the rough wall. Kit raised his own fists, screaming with frustrated rage, but something else welled up inside him, a sadness that sucked the air from his lungs and left him feeling hollow and cold. The last thing he saw were his companions staring at him in wide-eyed horror before he fell into darkness.
If the Queen’s household had been quiet before, it was sepulchral now. Juliana’s ladies were not permitted to speak unless spoken to, though the Queen spent so many hours in the little chapel that she was seldom there to give permission. The summer days seemed far too long, the hours endless. Coby tried to occupy her time with sewing, but that only left her mind free to worry about Kit and Mal. She had seen neither of them since the day of the coronation procession, did not even know if either of them were still alive, although she hoped that someone would have brought word if they were not.
Her one small consolation was that Olivia appeared even more frustrated by their confinement and silence than herself. The “castrato” was not permitted to sing, of course, not even a hymn or psalm at their daily worship. Olivia spent most of the day staring out of the window or hunched up on a cushion, eyes closed. Coby wondered if she was wandering the dreamlands or merely feigning sleep to avoid what little conversation the others dared attempt.
One thing Coby knew for sure: since Mal’s plan had failed, she had no choice but to get Kit out of here herself. She considered petitioning the Queen, but if she were refused it would only make life ten times more awkward. It also felt discourteous to ask for herself what the Queen no doubt longed for and was unlikely to get. Reluctantly she put that option aside, to save as a last resort. The best plan was to rely on no one but herself, which meant finding a way out of the castle. And that required a reconnoitre. Getting out of Saint Thomas’s Tower was easy enough; all she had to do was wait until Juliana went to prayer, then take herself off to her bedchamber complaining of womanly pains. If any of the other ladies discovered her absence and betrayed her, she would take the consequences.
She tarried in the outer ward for a while, examining possible exits whilst pretending to be enjoying the rose garden, just in case anyone was observing her from the surrounding towers’ windows. The Cradle Tower’s gate opened directly onto the moat, which was no use at all, but she had discovered there was a landward exit somewhere hereabouts used by the warders to get to Tower Hamlets. It was somewhere beyond the far wall of the rose garden, and with the skeleton keys she had brought hidden in her sewing basket, it would not be too hard to get through the locked gate in the garden wall. No doubt the causeway itself was guarded, but it seemed their best chance of escape.
With the exit from the outer ward accounted for, that just left the issue of getting into the Bloody Tower. In addition to the covered walkway to the Wakefield Tower on the same level as the Queen’s bedchamber, there looked to be an open walkway above. Perhaps it was part of the guards’ nightly round, though. She made her way into the inner ward and rapidly assessed possible entrances from that side; there might also be a way in from the lower level of the round Wakefield Tower, since it closely abutted the rectangular mass of the Bloody Tower. Nor was that entrance guarded, which was promising. Unless it meant there was no route through to the prince’s chambers and hence no need for a guard. If only she could explore properly! With a grimace of frustration she walked up the slope to the coldharbour gate that guarded the small ward between the White Tower and the Great Hall. There might be nothing she could do for the dead who had been taken to the makeshift mortuary in the hall, but at least she could report to the Queen on how many had been claimed by their families.
For a brief moment she entertained the idea of disguising Kit as a dead body and having Ned come and take him away, but that would be far too hard to arrange given the lack of communication so far. No. Simple and fast was the only way that was likely to work, and even the chance of that was not good. But what other choice did she have?