Emmie and the Tudor Queen

by Natalie Murray

  “Is everything okay?”

  She nodded, a blush creeping across her skin. “He just wants to catch up with you. It’s a shame that it took all this for him to wake up, but I think he finally has. Can you believe it?”

  My teeth dug into my bottom lip. After a decade of Dad being largely a no-show, I’d expected my mom to give the guy a tougher time about wanting a free pass back into my life. The problem was that Mom had zero sense when it came to my old man, and this time I wasn’t here to help her handle his miraculous comeback.

  You can always visit your mom now and then, Emmie. That’s if you can find some medieval charger-cable thingy for the blue-diamond ring so it doesn’t conk out.

  “I have to go,” I said tightly. Mom’s hollow cheeks blurred through my tears.

  She wrapped her arms around me again. I wasn’t the only one crying. I reminded myself that college-aged kids across America were living apart from their parents. This was normal. If only Tudor England didn’t feel so many centuries away—literally.

  Mom brushed her nose with her knuckle. “Can I drop you off somewhere?”

  “No, thanks...I’ll just be here for a little bit longer.” I eyed the quiet corner with the comfy armchairs that were out of view of the security cameras. With any luck, I could fall asleep there without ending up on a paranormal reality television show about mysterious vanishings.

  Mom nodded at the blue-diamond ring on my thumb. “Ah, right. You have to disappear.” She waved a hand magically.

  I clutched her delicate fingers one last time. “Thank you so much for driving all this way. I know it was a big ask, and I’m so grateful.”

  “You didn’t ask; I offered,” Mom corrected. “And I’d do it again tomorrow if it meant I got to see you, even for a few minutes.”

  “Mom,” I pleaded, reaching toward her as she stepped backward. She nodded like she was going to be okay, but her crumpled face betrayed the gesture.

  I watched her stop at the book display by the entrance, grabbing a title that caught her eye. She held the book up in the air and smiled at me before returning it to the shelf. After blowing me a tear-stained kiss, Mom slipped away from me through the double doors.

  I felt like the worst daughter who’d ever lived.

  I crossed to the window display and picked up the hardcover text she’d waved at me. It was called The Tudors: England’s Most Notorious Royal Family. My stomach wound into a painful ball. Mom was trying to connect with me on something she could never understand. I flicked to the section about Nicholas the Ironheart, deliberately squinting to blur my vision as I braved a few words, jittery at what I’d find.

  * * *

  The marriage of King Nicholas I and Princess Henriette of France was divisive and gave rise to civil conflicts that spilled across the border.

  * * *

  I snapped the book shut, every inch of my skin burning.

  Why did it still say that King Nick married Princess Henriette and not me?

  A woman bouncing a toddler on her knee kept scoping out my kirtle like I was some sort of matinee show. I blocked the offending book from my mind and hurried into the quiet corner of the library, relieved to find it vacant of prying eyes. After settling into a cushy armchair, I wedged the activated charcoal bottle beneath my arm and wriggled into a position comfortable enough to sleep in. Even if someone did see me vanish, at least it wouldn’t be caught on camera. I jerked at the memory of the sleeping pill still sitting in the ring casing—I’d completely forgotten it last time! My fingers reached for the tiny latch, but the pill would make me groggy when I arrived back, and I needed to be fully charged to help Lucy. I decided to try to fall asleep without it first.

  It turned out that I didn’t need the pill: it took less than thirty minutes of meditating to send my shattered body into a power nap, but I woke back in the library in a disoriented spiral of nausea. I’d never regret pushing the ring’s limits to try to save Lucinda’s life, but if I never saw Nick Tudor again, I’d never get over it. The pattern of dozing off and waking in the library chair repeated on loop until the sky outside had darkened and the library had begun to empty. The woman with the toddler was long gone. If I didn’t time travel soon, I’d be sleeping in a snowbank and probably waking up in a Boston emergency room.

  I kissed the glassy tip of the table-cut diamond and slid my hand into the warmth of my bodice, my palm resting over my heart.

  Come on…please. Take me home. I want to go home.

  I smelled the sublime scent before I even saw him. My sluggish eyelids cracked open at the familiar aroma of rose oil and the heat of a crackling fire. I scrambled onto my elbows, searching the dim candlelight. It was nightfall at Hampton Court, and my husband, Nick Tudor, was sitting right across from me.

  A gasp of shock shot from my throat like I’d been punched in the stomach. The love of my life was home safe!

  But Nick didn’t even move, let alone speak. He just sat in his gilded armchair, blinking at me with a lifeless expression.

  Something was terribly wrong—something even worse than Lucinda’s poisoning.

  20

  “You’re back,” I said with a high-pitched cry. “You’re okay.” I rolled out of the bed, tripping over my skirts, which had twisted around me. My head ached from the malfunctioning time travel, and my balance was off.

  Nick stayed frozen as I fell onto him. I folded my arms around his pearl-colored doublet, breathing him in. My skin throbbed with heat, and the world spun. My Nick.

  He didn’t respond—not so much as a flinch. I pulled back, searching his face. There were no signs of injury. “Oh, thank God,” I said, clinging to him again. “I was freaking out.”

  The bedchamber was as quiet as a graveyard, except for Nick’s steady breathing.

  “Babe?” I said, pressing my hands to his cheeks and angling his face to look at me. His seawater-colored eyes were blocks of ice. Was this PTSD? Or worse—had he come back from his war as the implacable Nicholas the Ironheart?

  I climbed off him. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  He aimed a finger at the plastic bottle protruding from the bed sheets. “What is this?” he said evenly.

  All the air fled my body as I remembered. “It’s for Mistress Parker.” I reached for the bottle. “It’s medicine from my time. She was poisoned.”

  “I am acquainted with Mistress Parker’s condition.”

  “Is she still…is she alive?”

  “To my knowledge.”

  His eyes flickered to mine, and our gazes fused like magnets. After a moment, he looked away, climbing out of the chair to distance himself from me.

  He poured himself a cup of wine and waved the flask at me, but I shook my head. When he took a long swig, still not showing either happiness or relief at seeing me, I felt like throwing the bottle of activated charcoal right at his head.

  “Is something wrong?” I said with deliberate terseness.

  Nick didn’t reply. He just turned toward the elaborately carved shutters shrouding the lattice window.

  “Nick!” I snapped. He spun to me and glared. “What’s wrong with you?” I said. “We haven’t seen each other in months. I didn’t even know if you were alive, and not a second has gone by that I haven’t wished that you were standing here right now. And now that you are, the only thing you have to say is about this freaking bottle?” I shook it at him.

  I expected fireworks in response, knowing my husband’s temperament, but he just silently poured himself more wine.

  I exhaled through my teeth and reached for an empty cup. Nick watched me from the corner of his eye as I filled it to the brim. I took a giant sip of the sweet liquid before unscrewing the cap from the plastic bottle and emptying as much activated charcoal powder into the wine as the instructions directed.

  Nick whirled to face me, both brows raised.

  “Mistress Parker has to drink this immediately,” I explained without looking at him. “It’s a remedy for poison from my time
, but it might not work. It’s probably too late. Still, I’m going to try. It has to be better than bloodletting and leeches.” I slid the plastic bottle beneath his bed, hiding it from the chamber attendants. We could get rid of it later. I grabbed the cup containing the medicine and headed for the doors. Nick seized my wrist to stop me, swiping away the cup of charcoal-infused wine with his other hand.

  “You are my wife; you are not an apothecary,” he said, dropping the cup onto the oak table. Before I could blink, he dug out the plastic bottle from beneath the bed and tossed it into the burning hearth.

  “Nick!” I chastised, covering my mouth. It didn’t take long for the licking flames to consume the plastic, sending up a disgusting, lethal stench.

  Nick paced away, coughing into his armpit. When he’d settled his throat, he called for a page. A sweaty-faced boy arrived within seconds.

  “See to it that Doctor Norris administers this remedy to Mistress Lucinda Parker without delay,” Nick commanded with a rasp, handing the boy the cup containing the activated charcoal. “The queen is in need of supper,” Nick added while facing the carved stone mantel, swirling red wine in his cup. The page bowed and scampered away.

  “I wanted to give that to Lucinda myself!” I exclaimed as Nick shut the bedchamber doors.

  “I will have the linens made ready so you may wash,” he said with his back to me. “You may then take supper.”

  A dumbfounded laugh spurted from my lips. Hundreds of words I could’ve shouted at him gathered on my tongue, but none fired. He picked up a scroll from a side table and began leisurely reading it. I couldn’t stand being in this room another second. The smoke wasn’t the only toxic thing.

  “In case you didn’t know, I missed you like crazy,” I said without looking at him. “All I’ve done is wait for this day, longing to see you back home and safe. But, once again, this is not at all how I imagined it to be. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  I felt the heat of his eyes burning my back as I barged through the doors.

  Smearing away tears with my fingertips, I power-walked to my chambers while looking any passersby dead-on in the face. I was officially over mentally apologizing for upsetting the nobles’ ambitions by marrying the king. Come at me, trolls! I wanted to shout. I’ve seen the freaking future, so yeah—I win.

  My chambers smelled like the stinky herbs my friend Mia’s mom used to boil, but at least Lucinda wasn’t alone. My crepe-pink bell sleeves brushed past the sunken cheeks of Alice, Bridget, and a few other well-wishers as I made my way through to Lucinda.

  Doctor Norris was seated beside the bed, dabbing black liquid into the corners of her mouth. It pooled there before oozing down her chin. The gold wine cup beside him confirmed that the liquid was my wine-infused activated charcoal. I moved closer to appraise its effects, but there didn’t seem to be any. Lucinda wasn’t even able to swallow the stuff. Her eyes were closed, and her skin was an unearthly shade of gray.

  Norris grunted as he straightened, a blackened cloth hanging by his side. “I shall call in the minister,” he said, vacating the stool for me, but I felt too unsettled to even move.

  Mom had warned me that the charcoal would be too late, and she was right. I’d had one chance to seek out help from the modern world and returned with something totally useless. Was there more I could’ve done?

  I blinked away tears. Alice slid beside me, falling to her knees and clasping her hands together. Bridget slipped beside Alice, weeping again, and my legs buckled. I sank to the woven mat and joined them in prayer. I didn’t come from a religious family, but as I sat there hearing nothing but Lucinda’s shallow breaths, I outright begged for her life.

  My eyes sprang open, meeting the silky edge of the bed sheet. This wasn’t the first time I’d pleaded for the life of an innocent girl in this century. Nick’s sister Kit had been destined to die in Tudor England until I manipulated things to stop it from happening. I’d literally inserted myself into a world where I didn’t belong and saved the life of a girl who was fated to die at the age of eight.

  My stomach crashed to the floor. Did lex talionis—an eye for an eye—mean that another life now had to be taken? Was Lucinda’s life an exchange for Kit’s?

  Velvet slippers scuffed the matting behind us. The minister had stepped into the room, motioning for the rest of us to vacate the chamber.

  “Are you wearied from your journey, my lady?” Bridget said to me in the drawing-room. Her eyes were so puffy from crying that it was a wonder she could see.

  “Hungry?” added Alice, touching my sleeve.

  I shook my head. I didn’t know why they were so worried about me—all I could think about was the brilliance of Lucinda’s smile…of her sitting on her usual stool across from me, stitching tiny butterflies with perfectly arched wings.

  An abrupt stiffness swept over the chamber, everyone gasping and bowing.

  I glanced behind me into Nick Tudor’s heart-stopping stare. He towered in the doorway like the embodiment of kingly presence, a black coat elegantly draped over his doublet.

  “Emmeline, will you share a walk with me?” he said. He’d never called me by my first name in front of so many people.

  For a few moments, I didn’t move. I was beyond furious with him.

  His light eyes softened as they lured mine, his cheeks crimson where his dimples deepened. He felt guilty about earlier, I could tell. Plus, we had an audience, and publicly challenging the king in this world was a fast-track to even more disgrace.

  I rose to accept his outstretched hand, my fingers folding into the tingly heat of his skin. We strode right past the guards with the untouchable authority that only the king enjoyed.

  The snow had finally melted, but the air remained icy as we began to cross the courtyard. I dropped Nick’s hand and folded my arms over my chest. He shrugged off his ebony coat embroidered with gold stars and crescent moons and laid it over my shoulders. I was too cold to resist, but I didn’t let him see how much the touch of him soothed me. My heart still hurt over how he’d treated me in his bedchamber after having being parted for months.

  “Aren’t you cold?” was all I said as we strolled in the direction of his private gardens.

  He shook his head. “Here feels a great deal warmer after the wretched north.”

  While the days had become longer, I noticed a sandy-yellow light haloing the exterior palace walls, like extra torches had been lit tonight. Nick looked only at his feet.

  “Where did you want to walk to?” I said flatly. I wanted him to know that I was still fuming.

  “Perhaps you might tell me, Emmie; you appear to be in command nowadays.”

  I paused at the gatehouse leading to the privy garden. “Okay, you need to tell me what’s wrong,” I said, already trembling. “Because it’s been pretty horrible here these past few months, and you being cranky with me about something is not helping.”

  He crossed his thick arms. “Cranky?”

  “Pissed off,” I explained. “Angry…mad…rude. That’s it—the way you’ve been toward me today is rude. And I don’t care if we’re married or that you’re the king—you don’t treat me that way.”

  “You left me,” he blurted, his voice carrying over the wind. He opened his mouth to say more, but his lips shut again. He looked away like he was too upset to speak.

  “When?” I said, dumbstruck. “All I’ve done is sit here and wait for you like a dutiful Tudor wife!”

  He seemed to tower over me, a pillar of strength, but his face held the wounds of a child who’d been abandoned. “For many weeks, Emmie, I have suffered in ways you would believe not. The high north is a place of utter lawlessness, rife with savages who deny the will of their king and willingly seek the fate of high treason. The villages are infested with the pox and plague, and there were complaining soldiers and apostates at every turn. Then the traitor Henry Howard retreated, and I knew not where he was until he was sighted on the roads toward Robin House. All I could think of was you bein
g there without me, and how Howard wishes us both dead. I made straight for Robin House until I received word of your return to Hampton Court. You cannot imagine my relief when I learned that you were safe here at the palace, and well—”

  “Yes, actually, I can imagine that relief,” I cut in.

  “However, when I arrived here,” Nick continued, “I found you to be gone entirely, with no letter or word of any kind and no sign of the enchanted ring. When my gentlemen informed me that you had been lodging in my bedchamber, I sat there in wait for countless hours, believing with every stroke of the clock that you would not ever return to me…and perhaps with my son and heir in your belly!”

  My mouth hung open as I processed his barrage of words. “There’s no son—or daughter—at least not yet. And that’s why you’re pissed off? Because I went back to my time to get medicine that could save Lucinda’s life?”

  He raised a finger. “You swore an oath to me that you would never take leave to your time without me unless your life was at stake. Only together. Did you forget our vow in such haste?” He looked like he might grab my shoulders and shake me, but clenched his fists at his sides. “What if that ring, so utterly fickle, had failed in its enchantment and you could never return here? You wagered everything we have for a maiden that you do not even like!”

  “No, I do like her,” I said, stepping forward to find his face in the shadows of the courtyard. “All Lucinda Parker ever did to upset me was love you—the same way I do. How am I supposed to hate her for something I do myself as freely as breathing?” My breath shook, a quivery puff of ice. “The poison that Mistress Parker took was meant for me. So was the arrow that nearly killed Alice Grey. There was a fencing show at court while you were away, and almost everybody got up and left in protest when I showed up. The people hate me here!”

  A blast fired somewhere west of the palace, chased by the muffled shouts of men, but Nick didn’t move. He gripped his forehead with one hand, holding it there as we stood in a deadlock.