by Cynthia Hand
She knew about tinctures. He knew about alfalfa.
She had the soft skin and the delicate cheekbones and that strange way her lips moved along with the words when she read a particularly intriguing passage. . . .
G closed his eyes. Her soft skin. Her lips.
Those lips that Love’s own hand did make, he composed wistfully.
As he approached the Tower stables, he wondered who would be there to greet him tonight. Her Majesty the Queen of England . . . or his lady?
He walked into the dining room, prepared to find a lavish supper full of servants and silverware and food befitting a queen, but what he saw utterly surprised him.
Two place settings, two candles, and a platter holding a small roasted duck, surrounded by root vegetables and garnishes, as well as a small bowl of fruit. And the Queen of England sitting at the end of the table.
He looked wary. “Your Majesty,” G said.
“My lord,” she said, nodding her head.
“Where is everybody?”
“Who?”
“Your . . . court? Your ladies? Your servants?”
She shrugged. “Being queen comes with several advantages, one of which is that if I order everyone out of the dining room, they obey.”
“Even my father?” G said.
Jane winced at the mention of his father, but she recovered quickly and replaced the wince with a blank expression. “Even him. You should’ve seen the look on his face, but yes, even him.”
G’s father was obviously a tense subject between them, but right now, everything seemed to be a tense subject between them. G grabbed a flask of wine from the end of the room and two goblets, even though he was pretty sure only one would be used. He sat himself down at his place on her right-hand side. He filled his goblet, raised the flask toward her in a questioning gesture (she declined of course), and then he set the flask on his right, out of reach of the queen. She did not object.
If anything, tonight he would prove he could handle his own goblet. He would be king of his cup.
They served themselves from the dishes before them, and then G steered their conversation to safe topics. They discussed her day of navigating her queenly duties, and his day of navigating the northeastern hills. Her day of picking out the color of her ladies’ brocades, and his day of picking hay out of his teeth with his tongue.
She said his father was at her side all day long and she was quite annoyed with his ever-presence, and she would be glad he was to be gone from the castle the following day.
“My father is going somewhere?” G said. Great. They were back on the subject of his father.
“Yes. I thought you knew. Oh, no, of course you wouldn’t, because he received the message while you were in your . . . four-legged state. He was called away urgently to the countryside. He wouldn’t say why, so I assumed it was a personal matter.” She brought a hand to her lips. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I should’ve been concerned that the matter might be of import to you as well, since you are Dudley’s son.”
She said it as if blood ties to the man directly spoke to his own character. G fought the urge to engage in the territory they’d already covered and raised a hand. “My lady, I am sure everything is fine with my father.” And the truth was, G wasn’t worried about any sort of family emergency. He could only think that the urgent business calling his father away had more to do with the same business that had occupied the entirety of his father’s mind for the past several years: the business of controlling the throne.
G guessed this latest message had to do with the hunt for Mary. And if his father was personally answering the call, it meant things were not going well.
“Gifford? Are you all right?” Jane asked.
“To be sure,” G answered, shaking away the thought. Several times, he’d considered telling Jane about what he’d overheard the night of her coronation, but he thought better about it. She had been so distressed about becoming queen in the first place, and if she were to know Mary didn’t accept her as sovereign . . .
No, he would hold back the rampant speculation and wait until his father returned with actual news. Although if she found out he’d withheld information, she would have a real reason to not trust him.
“I am merely concerned with our . . . I mean . . . your first decree as sovereign ruler.”
“Oh. Right. I’ve been contemplating that today, while I was reading in the book Drafting Decrees, the Ancient Language of Binding Arbitration.” She reached under the table and pulled up a messy stack of parchments, many covered with her handwriting, phrases scrawled, words crossed out. “I’ve been practicing how I could phrase it, so that I don’t mention E∂ians directly, or Verities for that matter, but so that it covers them and also covers other people who might be unfairly. . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked at G.
She had used the word I, not we. (He’d wanted the Jane and Gifford We, not the Royal We, which she still refused to use.) This was definitely the Queen of England, and not his lady, sitting at the head of the table. G leaned back and poured himself another cup of wine.
“Am I boring you?” Jane said.
“No,” G responded, “but that’s only because I stopped listening ages ago.”
“Ah,” Jane said.
She looked down at her plate, her cheeks tinged with pink, and G wondered if he had been too straightforward. But really, did she even need him here for this conversation? She obviously didn’t need him by her side, ruling the kingdom. Why did she want him around for the drafting of decrees?
They ate the rest of their dinner in silence, being that there appeared to be no safe topics left to discuss, and then they went to their separate adjoining residences, the door between them never opened.
They didn’t see much of each other for the next few days. G’s daylight hours were spent wandering farther and farther from the castle, to the point where on the eighth night of the reign of Queen Jane, he had gone so far from the castle that when the sun set, he was still miles away. He made it to a cluster of trees outside one of the villages surrounding London just as the transformation took place, and he hid himself in a patch of bushes. Why hadn’t he figured out to control this blasted curse yet?
He guessed because he hadn’t really tried.
What he wouldn’t give to be at Dudley Castle right now, with its remote location and the roads he knew in the dark of night.
Yes, he’d run into this problem a few times when he’d gotten carried away at his home, and he’d discovered that the best course of action was to find a tavern attached to a brothel. There it was easy to grab clothes strewn about, the owners of which would be too sloshed to care. And these kinds of taverns were easy to find. Just follow the noise.
G wrangled up a few of the leafier vines, positioned them in all the right places, and ventured out of the trees and into the village, keeping to the shadows and following the noise to the nearest tavern, which was called The Three Ladies. Judging by the “ladies” standing outside, G had found his place.
There are two rules to finding clothes when you need them and are currently without: the first, act like you know what you’re doing; the second, do it all in one continuous motion. G took note of the nearest darkened window, inhaled deeply, and dropped the back cluster of leaves. (He would need an empty hand.)
He threw open the window and climbed in, incurring feminine gasps and another figure drunkenly clamoring for light. But it was too late, because G was already out the bedroom door wearing someone else’s trousers, and pulling his arms through shirtsleeves.
To the inhabitants of said room, G would be dismissed as a ghost. Until the following morning, when the owner of said trousers discovered their absence.
G walked to the adjoining tavern, holding his trousers up to account for the ale belly of the previous owner. He made the decision then and there to cut back on his ale consumption.
The coronation of the queen was so recent that G was fairly certain people wouldn’t be able to recogn
ize Her Majesty Queen Jane, let alone her consort. Nevertheless, G kept his head down as he crept from the back rooms and toward the bar. He was so focused on reaching the front door without assault, he almost missed the faint whisper.
“Long live Queen Mary.”
G stopped and whipped about. Two red uniforms caught his eye. The soldiers were standing at the bar, the bartender handing them brown bags full of something bulky.
Perhaps G had misheard the declaration. But no, the names Mary and Jane sounded nothing alike. Then he heard another declaration, whispered again, this time from one of the soldiers at the bar, and in a response.
“Long live the true and rightful queen.”
G froze in step. His heart tried to escape up his throat. He swallowed it back down. He knew that he must keep a low profile, although that was more of an automatic response before it was based in logical reasoning. Reason would tell him he was the queen’s consort, after all. The soldiers should be under his wife’s control.
And yet, here were the rumblings of treason in this random tavern just outside of London. Several more soldiers dotted the seats in the great room of the place, but they had no ale in front of them. Only food and water. G had a moment to be grateful he wasn’t dressed in his usual finery, and therefore did not look out of place.
He strode to the front door, an urgency in his step that wasn’t there before, and as he exited the tavern, he noticed points of light dotting the hillside.
Campfires. Tents. An encampment. Within marching distance of London. He needed to get back to the Tower, and fast. Curse his damn curse. Why couldn’t he just change at will? He was a horse minutes ago. Minutes ago! He got down on all fours right there in the dirt road and squeezed his eyes shut and—
“Stand up, ye daft beggar,” one of the wobbly tavern patrons said.
G waved him off and tried to focus on the feeling of the wind in his mane, his haunches springing from the—
“Had too much to drink, that one,” another man slurred. “Thinks he’s an arse!”
Realizing it wasn’t going to work, G shot up from the ground. “A horse,” G said sharply to anyone who would listen. “A horse! My wife’s kingdom for a horse!”
A group of drunken men looked at Gifford as if they were disgusted someone could consume so much ale.
“Peace, ye fat guts!” The largest and sweatiest of the men spat at G. “No one’s gotchyer horse.”
“No, I need a horse.”
The large man belly laughed. “Of course ye do. Hey, Mason, get the beggar man a horse!”
The whole group belly laughed, and G thought better of telling them it really wasn’t that funny, and that the man who had spoken really had the fat guts, and instead he just took off running toward the castle.
G ran flat out for a good minute, minute and a half, before he realized he would have to pace himself, and as a man, he didn’t have the endurance he enjoyed as a horse.
It was going to be a long trip back to the castle.
Hours later, when he reached the gates, and spent extra time convincing the guards he really was the prince consort, he staggered into the main hall and through the series of stairways that would lead him to the queen’s chamber. It was well after the queen would’ve given up on him for supper and turned in.
He used his fist to bang on her chamber door.
“Jane!” he shouted. “Jane, open up.”
After a few long moments, she opened the door, the vestiges of sleep still in her gaze, a long robe draped over her shoulders. At the sight of G, she pulled the robe even tighter.
“What is it?” she said primly.
He pushed his way inside and shut the door behind them.
“This is very—” Jane started to say, but G cut her off.
“My lady, Your Majesty . . . Jane. You need to call a meeting of the Council Privy.”
“It’s the Privy Council, Gifford.”
“Yes. That. Call a meeting.” He sat her on the bed and told her a brief version of events, continuing even after her raised eyebrows at the part where he was in the bedroom of a brothel, all the way to seeing the troops. When he was finished, Jane took hold of one of the posts of her four-poster bed.
“But . . . but your father assured us we were fine.”
“Where is my father?” G asked. “Have you seen him today? Is he back?”
“No. I haven’t seen him since he left a few days ago.”
G took a deep breath. “Look, I haven’t been as forthright with you as I should, but please believe me. I thought I was acting in your best interests, and I will explain it all, but we need to call a meeting of the Privy Council now.”
She nodded, and G went to the door and shouted for the servant outside to gather the council members, and then he went back in and explained everything to his lady. The message his father had received about Mary. The fact that Mary would never accept Jane as queen. The emergency missive he’d received that had called him away. After he was finished, Jane’s face had drained of color, if that were possible for such a pale creature.
“But . . . surely we would have heard of soldiers encamped so close, especially if they were hostile to the crown.”
G nodded. “That’s why I wanted to call the meeting of the Privy Council. They all ratified the king’s change to the line of succession, but I feel that they have been keeping things from you, and me as well, because they didn’t think we could handle it yet.”
Jane’s face grew even paler, so at this point her skin was a gray color.
G took her hand. It was the first time they’d touched in days. “It will be all right. I’m sure the council knows of the advance, and has made preparations.”
Jane went to get dressed while they waited for the council to be gathered. G offered to leave and have one of her ladies come in and help her, but Jane begged him to stay (chair turned, of course) and insisted she could dress herself, because she’d been dressing herself for all these years and she certainly hadn’t forgotten—
G begged her not to explain.
She finished getting dressed. G went through their adjoining door, quickly put on trousers that fit and a simple tunic, and then returned to Jane.
And they waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Hours passed. There was no hint of dawn in the sky, but it couldn’t be far off.
Jane had taken to pacing her room, and G had the fleeting thought that they would have to reinforce her floor for all the pacing she had done in, what was it? Almost nine days of being queen.
Finally, there was a knock on the door.
G opened it, and there was the original messenger they’d sent. “Your lordship, I sent word to the members of the Privy Council, and well, most of them have quarters nearby, and some don’t, so some had to be tracked down . . . and . . . well . . .”
“Well what?” G said. “Are they all gathered yet?”
“No, my lord.”
“That’s all right. We will meet with the ones who are gathered so far.” It was getting late, after all, and he wanted to meet before the hour of horse.
“But, sir, there are . . . none.”
“None?”
“I do apologize, sir. There are none. I don’t know where they are. I’ve asked the queen’s guard to look, but I don’t know how hard they tried. . . .”
Suddenly, the messenger just stopped talking and ran away.
“G?” Jane said. “What is it?”
“Stay here. I’m going to check on something.”
G stepped out into the passageway, and Jane followed close behind. He’d known she wouldn’t stay.
The hallways were strangely quiet, even for the predawn hour. At the very top of the White Tower, they stopped at a window that overlooked the direction of the encampment. G peeked his head out and saw the soldiers and the banners with an embroidered pomegranate on a bed of roses.
And then his mouth turned down. And his shoulders sagged. And his heart san
k.
“What do you see?” Jane asked in a hushed whisper.
“An army at the gates.” G tried not to look as terrified as he felt. “Mary’s army.”
SIXTEEN
Edward
“Are we there yet?” Edward asked for the umpteenth time.
“We’re five minutes closer than the last time you asked,” answered Gracie.
“Well, when are we going to get there?”
“Another day,” she answered. “Perhaps two if you keep stopping to ask me silly questions.”
Edward sighed. After day upon day (upon day) of trudging north through the woods in the seemingly endless rain, always wet and chilled to the bone, the king was tired of walking. His feet hurt, his head ached, his injured ankle bothered him, and fits of coughing and dizziness regularly overtook him.
The poison was still killing him, he supposed.
Right now the poison was the least of his worries. A few days ago there’d been soldiers on the road. The sight of them had filled Edward with dread, because the banners the soldiers marched under were not of the red roaring lion that marked Edward’s reign, but a pomegranate on a bed of roses. Mary’s insignia.
They’d been marching toward London.
Which meant things were about to get really bad for Jane.
“Can’t we find a way to get there any faster?” he asked, also for the umpteenth time.
Gracie smiled over at him with false sweetness. “You know, this journey would be far quicker if you’d turn yourself into a bird and ride upon my shoulder. Quicker and quieter.”
They’d had this argument before.
“No.” Edward didn’t think it proper to be carried by a woman—how would she ever be able to see him as a man if she was the one bearing him to safety? “If we could just travel on the main road . . .” he suggested.
This was also something they’d argued about.
“No,” she refused flatly. “The last thing we need is to come upon more soldiers, or even worse, members of the Pack. We have to stay out of sight.”
“Then perhaps we could acquire a horse. . . .”
