by Cynthia Hand
“Kill any animal you see!”
Jane’s tail felt huge and prickly. Instinct urged her to run in the opposite direction. (She had read somewhere that ferrets were fearless creatures, but she didn’t believe that, even if she was a ferret with a human mind. Ferrets wanted to live as much as anyone else.)
“Look, a dog! Get it!”
Boots struck the ground. She couldn’t tell how many went away from the bridge. Surely not all of them—they wouldn’t leave this entrance to the Tower completely unguarded.
She lifted her head, and looked around. Sniffed around, we should say, now that she had such an excellent nose.
First, she smelled the foul odor of sewage from the moat, and she immediately regretted her excellent nose. Then she tried to block out the stink and search for different notes in the air. Plants. Mold. Sweat.
There were two humans still here, she surmised after a moment of smelling and listening, both with their weapons drawn, ready to kill any animal they saw.
Ready to kill her.
Jane pressed her furry belly to the ground and considered her journey across the bridge. It was a narrow bridge, at least for a human. As a ferret, she had much more room. She just had to get past the men, squeeze through the closed portcullis, and find the correct tower.
Piece of cake. Right.
Behind her, toward the church where she’d left Gifford and Pet, a dog howled—and suddenly went silent. “I got one!” called a guard.
A fresh wave of adrenaline rolled over Jane.
(Okay, so we told you that anybody could die at any time, and you seem like you’re getting worried, but Pet’s fine. Jane had foreseen that the guards would spot the flash of her E∂ian change, so she’d recruited Pet to draw away the guards. Which would, in turn, give Gifford time to hide elsewhere while he waited for her to open the gate. Pet was meant to lead the guards into an ambush with some Pack members on the other side of the field, but whether she would accomplish that—or the guards would give up the chase—remains to be seen. But trust us: we’re not the type of narrators who would kill a dog.)
The dog howling was Jane’s signal to go.
Jane scampered onto the wooden bridge and darted down it as fast as her tiny legs could carry her.
“Watch out!” Boots came thumping toward her. “A rat!”
I am not a rat, Jane thought, and dashed straight for the nearest guard. She jumped onto his leg, climbed up to the top of his high boots, and bit hard into the soft flesh behind his knee. Her claws dug into the leather of his boot. Can a rat do this? she thought smugly.
The guard howled and swatted her off, knocking Jane’s tiny body toward the edge of the bridge.
“Get that rat!”
Her anger fueled her. Jane jumped to all four feet, ignoring the shocks of pain from her tumble, and kept running, darting to and fro. The guards were after her, but she was quick enough that they could never quite catch her. Finally she swerved so that when they bent to scoop her up, they crashed into each other—and Jane was across the bridge, through a hole in the portcullis, and running into the Tower of London at full tilt.
The stone walls rose above her, huge and imposing. Even more so as a ferret.
But, of course, Jane had spent the day memorizing maps of the Tower of London and figuring out how long it would take her to get from place to place in her E∂ian form. So it was with reasonable certainty that she hastened across the green, squeezed beneath a door, scurried through a few halls, and finally faced an endless set of stairs that would take her to the top of the Constable Tower—the building in the Tower of London that they’d decided would make the best place for their little invasion.
The steps were each as tall as she was.
Speed was important.
But so was stealth.
But so was speed.
Edward was waiting.
She listened hard for anyone moving nearby, but there were no sounds here. Not yet. But the guards she’d evaded on the bridge would soon be after her.
Which meant she needed speed more than stealth right now.
Jane turned into a girl.
She was a naked girl, but there weren’t any options for clothing. As quickly as she could, she hurried up the stone stairs, her bare feet growing more and more chilled with every turn around the narrow stairwell. It was the right decision, because she reached the top more quickly as a human than she would have as a ferret.
The room with the biggest windows was at the top. Hurriedly, Jane grabbed a fire poker from next to the hearth and crossed to the south-facing window. The windows of the Tower were made of cloudy, ancient glass, and they didn’t open. She felt guilty, but she had no choice. She hit the glass with the poker using all her strength, over and over until it cracked and then shattered, leaving a large gaping hole that opened into the night sky.
That should do it.
Jane dropped the poker and scanned for anything useful. The room was crammed with wardrobes and cabinets and crates, which was part of the reason they’d chosen this particular part of the Tower of London.
First, they needed clothes. Most of the clothes in the wardrobes were military uniforms, which were all too big for Jane. (Not to mention the indignity of pants.) But since nudity was out of the question, she pulled on the smallest set she could find and laid out another uniform next to the broken window.
“Come on, birdbrain.” She glanced out, but all she saw was dark. From this angle, she couldn’t see much of anything—not the battle where Bess and Archer led their attack on the city wall, not even the place nearby where Gifford was hopefully unharmed and waiting for her. But she could hear the guards calling to each other in the courtyard below. They probably hadn’t seen where she’d gone (although surely they’d heard the window bashing, so they might have a general idea), but they knew someone had infiltrated the tower. At some point they’d get organized and search it structure by structure. If she stayed here much longer, she’d be caught.
But Edward wasn’t here yet.
What would she do if he didn’t come?
Jane tried to ignore the wild thudding of her heart and moved on to search the cabinets, looking for weapons, but they were all filled with stockings, boots, and hats. Further inspection only turned up a few vaguely weapon-like items. A frying pan. A rolling pin. Oh, and the fire poker.
Jane snatched it up from where she’d dropped it on the floor and smiled at the pointed tip. That could work.
But where was Edward?
As if on cue (or maybe a bit late on his cue), a kestrel flew through the window.
“Edward!” At least, she hoped the bird was Edward. It’d be embarrassing to just start talking with a strange bird.
At the flash of light, Jane turned away and covered her eyes.
“Jane!” the king greeted her happily. “Sorry, but it was harder to tell which window I should come to. I know you said the south-facing window, but I don’t have the best sense of direction as a bird.”
“No time for conversation, cousin,” Jane said. “Gifford’s waiting.”
“Right.” He sounded uncharacteristically nervous. “Let’s go.”
“But I did set out some clothes for you.”
“Oh, right. How thoughtful.” He shuffled around and hurried into his clothes. From the courtyard below Jane suddenly heard a shout: a soldier had come upon the broken glass from the window. They only had a few moments before they’d be discovered.
Edward looked at her grimly. “So what do we have in the way of weapons?”
Jane tossed him the fire poker.
He held it like a sword, so maybe it would be useful after all. “Good enough. And for you?”
Jane picked up the frying pan.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Gifford
Where was she? G paced back and forth on the other side of the Iron Gate, squinting into the darkness past the portcullis, hoping for a sign of his Jane. The minutes felt like hours, and the seconds felt like days. Ever
y violent sound that pierced the night air (and there’d been a few violent sounds since he’d hoisted ferret-Jane over the abbey wall earlier) could be the harbinger of her death. The death of his wife. His beloved.
G loved her. But he hadn’t told her he loved her.
She had begged him to stay, and he’d wanted to, especially given the way she had kissed him. How had a girl like Jane kissed him like that? With her whole heart and her whole body? She’d probably read a dozen books with titles like The Kiss: It’s Not Just About the Lips.
The way Jane kissed, it was an art. She kissed by the book.
And yet, he’d still changed into a horse. And he hadn’t told her he loved her. Now she might die without knowing that she’d become his day and his night, and his sun and his moon. He adored Jane—he loved her! he loved her!—and he should have worn that for all to see. He shouldn’t have hidden his heart.
He closed his eyes and sent a quick prayer to the heavens that he would see her again.
He prayed Edward would keep her from harm.
He prayed if Edward failed, she would turn into a ferret and hide.
He prayed if she was discovered, she would slip from the soldier’s clumsy fingers.
And that if she couldn’t escape, they would kill her quickly.
G squeezed his eyes shut and tried to forget that last plea to heaven. Instead he composed a line of prose in his head.
If I may but see you again, my dearest, I will wear my heart upon my sleeve. . . .
He remembered Jane’s face right before she’d kissed him. He glanced at the flicker of the torches that framed the heavy gate, their flames weak and faint against the wind. Jane’s face could have taught those torches to burn bright. Last night, she was the sun, and all of the flowers in all of the counties turned toward her for warmth.
G pulled his quill, ink, and notebook from his pocket and fumbled as he tried to uncork the jar without spilling its contents.
(Unfortunately, reader, the much more portable pencil would not be invented until the late sixteenth century, and the closest thing to the pen we are all familiar with now was not invented until the nineteenth century, so G was left to fumble with ink and quill. The first people to read of our tale wondered why he bothered to bring a quill, ink jar, and notebook into battle at all, considering he was already carrying three swords—one for himself, Edward, and Jane, when they needed them—but G would argue that he was more familiar and comfortable with a quill in his hand rather than a sword, and if he had to choose one or the other to bring into battle, he’d bring the quill. Because when it came right down to it, he would probably have a better chance of defending himself with a quill.)
When G let his swords drop to the ground, he was finally able to put quill to paper.
Oh how she could teach the torches to burn bright. She was the sun—
Before he could finish his thought, he heard footfalls on the cobblestones inside the Tower, and then a hushed voice.
“Gifford?”
It was Edward. G pressed closer to the gate and could barely make out the silhouettes of two figures rushing toward him, but they didn’t come within a stone’s throw of G’s position before two other figures, with the distinct silhouettes of the Tower guards, intercepted them.
“Jane!” G called out in a loud whisper.
As G’s eyes adjusted to the scene before him, he saw Edward raise a . . . fire poker? . . . and Jane pull out . . . a frying pan?
Whose cockamamie idea were these weapons? Probably Jane’s. They seemed like Jane’s idea of weapons.
No one paid attention to her frying pan, though. Jane, by virtue of being a lady, was allowed to slide into the background. No one else so much as glanced in her direction as she retreated against the wall. She didn’t pose a threat.
Good, G thought. But part of him was grieved that she’d barely seemed to notice him at all.
The guards drew their swords and faced the king.
“Gentlemen,” Edward said. “Sheathe your weapons. I am King Edward the Sixth, by the grace of God, ruler of England, France, and Ireland. In earth, the supreme head. I am your rightful sovereign.”
“King Edward is dead,” one of the men responded. “And besides, doesn’t France have its own, separate king?”
“I am not dead,” argued Edward. “There are nefarious villains who would have you believe I died. But any accounts of my demise have been grossly exaggerated, I assure you, for here I am, very much alive.”
The guards exchanged looks.
“He speaks the truth,” G called from his position beyond the gate. “He is our true king. I have traveled with him to France to gather troops. I have fought alongside him as he killed the Great White Bear of Rhyl. Long live King Edward!”
The guard on the right began to lower his sword, until the guard on the left said, “Hold on. There’s no such thing as the GWBR. He obviously lies.”
The first guard scratched his head. “But what if he speaks the truth?”
“If he’s not speaking the truth, and we let him go, we’ll be hanged for treason. But if he is speaking the truth, we could kill him here, and no one would ever be the wiser.”
“No!” G said. “Bad decision!”
The guard on the right re-raised his sword and took a deep breath as if to speak, but he didn’t get a sound out before a loud bong rang out and he dropped like a stone. Jane stood behind the guard, her frying pan raised to where the man’s head had been.
“Wonderful, Jane!” G grinned. Frying pans. Who knew?
Edward, with his excellent mastery of fencing and his years of training and his newfound strength, swiftly dispatched the other guard with two flicks of his fire poker.
“Well done, Sire,” G said. For a moment, he wondered if it was indeed the best choice to skip those fencing lessons in favor of writing poetry. But that worry would have to wait until later. After the sword fight.
Edward sprinted to the gate, and soon Jane was there, too, and they used their combined weight to activate the pulley-and-counterweight system that raised the portcullis.
It didn’t lift fast enough for G. His gaze held Jane’s through the bars. The sound of paws against gravel announced Pet’s sudden arrival, and the dog scrambled under the portcullis and ran to Edward. As soon as G could, he crawled underneath and took his wife in his arms. “Jane.”
“Gifford.”
“I . . . we . . . There are so many things I should’ve told you—”
“We should get going,” Edward said.
(Now, we, as narrators, feel the need to inform you, dear reader, that we do not know how Edward always managed to thwart kisses. All we do know is that it was a gift he demonstrated throughout his life, most notably when his third cousin the Lady Dalrymple of Cheshire was about to kiss her new husband over their wedding altar, just after the priest pronounced them man and wife, and Edward stepped forward from his place of honor by the priest and said, “I hate to interrupt, but I thought now would be an excellent time to remind the wedding party not to throw rice, on account of the fact that birds, even kestrels, can choke on it.”)
Back to the scene at hand. Edward said to G and Jane, “Now we must get to the White Tower. And Mary.”
They all turned toward the huge stone structure that stood in the exact center of the Tower of London. The White Tower—the most ancient and well fortified of the castle buildings. Where Mary would be sitting on Edward’s throne.
“Did you bring the swords?” Edward asked G.
G ran back to the other side of the gate and tried to act like he hadn’t just left the swords sitting there. Jane kept her frying pan, but G and Edward each took a sword.
They were coming into the Tower of London as thieves in the night, and G was struck by the difference from the last time, when Jane was to be crowned queen, with royal guards escorting them in ceremony and deference. But before they could even start toward the White Tower, three more figures blocked the way. The first was a man G didn’t
know. The second was G’s brother, Stan. The third was the owner of one giant eagle nose.
Edward raised his sword immediately. “Bash,” he said.
“I’m sorry, what?” G was confused.
Edward tilted his head to indicate the first man with the sword. “That’s Bash, the weapons master. He taught me everything I know about swordplay.”
“Oh, excellent,” G said faintly. “Bash. Is that short for something?”
The man called Bash just glowered at them and dropped into a fighting stance. G moved in front of Jane and held his arm across her, feeling the urge to protect her, although he knew when it came down to it, there’d be no stopping her.
Dudley sneered at them. “How quaint. A sickly boy, a useless man-horse, and a girl. This should be easy.”
G had to admit his father had a point. Perhaps Edward could compete with Bash, but there was no way G could take on both Stan and his father.
“John Dudley,” spat out Edward. “You treacherous snake. You are a traitor to your country and your king. I will see your head on a pike.”
Bash made an offensive move—“Watch out!” Jane cried—and Edward reacted quickly. He lunged toward Bash as if he’d been waiting his whole life to duel the fencing master. The two of them almost danced to and fro, their swords flashing in the moonlight. Edward looked brilliant in G’s opinion—strong and quick on his feet. He fought like the king he was.
G turned to his brother, who lifted his own impressive blade.
“Stan,” G entreated. “Come to your senses. The king is alive. This will all come down to two sides: the righteous and the imposters. Right now, you stand with the latter.”
Stan’s sword wobbled, and he glanced sideways at his father.
“You’re wrong,” Lord Dudley said. “You’ve always been a fool.”
“The fool thinks he is wise,” G retorted. “But the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
That was a great line, he thought. He tried to remember where he’d stashed the quill and paper.
His father looked annoyed. He cleared his throat. “Whatever. Bash will dispatch the boy, and we all know that you’re no skilled swordsman.”
