by Hall, Ian
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead or undead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Ian Hall. Hallanish Publishing, at Smashwords Inc.
ISBN; 9781301711314
All rights reserved, and the authors reserve the right to re-produce this book, or parts thereof, in any way whatsoever.
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Copyediting by: Carolyn Pinard
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Chapter 1 Bedchamber
Chapter 2 Consolidation
Chapter 3 Royal Tutor
Chapter 4 Highwayman
Chapter 5 Dinner and a Date
Chapter 6 London Calling
Chapter 7 The Plot
Chapter 8 Richmond Palace
Chapter 9 Royal Audience
Chapter 10 Mistress Eleanor
Chapter 11 Presentation
Chapter 12 The Prince Rises
Chapter 13 My Lady Sleeps
Chapter 14 Westminster and Norfolk
Chapter 15 To Plymouth
Chapter 16 Hurry up and Wait
Chapter 17 Prince Meets Princess
Chapter 18 Running Like the Wind
Chapter 19 Waiting on the King
Chapter 20 Bedding Jane
Chapter 21 The Plot Thickens
Chapter 22 Last Minute Instructions
Chapter 23 The Royal Wedding
Chapter 24 Bloody Sheets
Chapter 25 The Wedding Festivities
Chapter 26 My Love Goes With Me
Chapter 27 Back to Ludlow
Chapter 28 The Scouring of Haddon Hall
Chapter 29 Christmas in Ludlow
Chapter 30 Princess Catherine
Chapter 31 A Winter’s Tale
Chapter 32 The Pomp and Ceremony
Chapter 33 Being a Vampire
Chapter 34 Tied and Helpless
Present day, Hartford, Connecticut
Bam. I got a full-fist hit at Fallon’s face, and I know I heard bone break. He sneered at me, clutching my arms, trying to move his grip to my head. I twisted away in response. Fallon and I had butted heads so often, my vampire boss had given me the go-ahead to take him out the next time we crossed paths; tonight, either Keith Fallon was going to crumble to dust, or I would.
I’d been a vampire for six years, and we’d run headlong into each other as many times; one vampire group against the other, Connecticut versus Massachusetts, Hartford v Boston.
Basstin.
The neon lighting of downtown Hartford spun around us as we danced together, snarling our death threats, throwing each other around the outside of the State Capital building, seemingly indifferent to a visit from the police.
Not that we couldn’t carry out the death threats, I mean, vampire against vampire is a dicey and deadly game. I felt his knee strike my thigh; oh, if I survived the conflict that one would leave a bruise. After a minute of struggling, I recognized Bushnell Park, and got bounced off a few trees for my inattention to the actual fight.
Bam, I slammed him into the Soldier and Sailor’s Arch, his shoulders taking a heck of a pounding on the cold hard stone.
Apart from the sounds of our struggle, the area remained deserted. Then he bared his teeth at me, pulling me close to his grasp. “Hartford fuck!” he hissed at me, closing in on my neck.
“Masshole!” I counteracted my Bostonian counterpart with a twist that sent us into a spin, taking my face away from his. Oh and did we spin.
I mean, I can run over a hundred miles an hour, so imagine our dual speeds. The air crackled, and as we spun we seemed to lift off the ground, our momentum gathering until a loud hum mingled with our cries and filled my ears.
I moved my hand from his shoulder to strike, but the centrifugal force made the blow difficult. I sensed the end was near, then gradually pulled him closer and closer; one of us would taste blood tonight.
Then SNAP!
Blackness.
And silence.
Unknown date
Bedchamber
Never being known for any outward bursts of emotion, I pressed my back against the cold stone wall and swallowed hard.
What the heck had just happened?
Still sweating from my fight, I panted quietly, allowing my breathing to return as close to normal as my current circumstances would allow.
Illuminated by a duet of candles on either side of the rather grand bed, the dimly-lit room before me looked quite austere. Apart from two antique drawer units, the room lay bare and dusty.
I did the usual anti-panic measures; I pinched myself, I slapped my cheek lightly, then I spoke.
“Hello?”
My voice sounded dull, with no trace of echo, the bare stone walls absorbing all its energy.
Everything seemed perfectly normal.
Except of course, that seconds before I had been in a dark Connecticut alleyway, spiraling in mortal combat with Fallon.
We’d been spinning so rapidly, my head still felt light and disorientated.
I felt pretty weirded out, I can tell you.
I took a step towards the light, alarmed by the loud crunching of my cowboy boots on the straw strewn on the smooth stone floor. Rough under my feet, like the walls; not tile. Sensing movement outside the room, I stopped to listen; footfalls outside the door. I flattened myself against the wall again, sidling towards the darker corner, my boot soles again scraping against the straw and the rough surface below.
The door burst open, and a gangly teenage boy raced in, barefoot, aiming himself at the bed. His long nightshirt trailed after him like a milky Superman cape.
“I shall not write another letter, not one!” he screamed, landing with a considerable thump on the bedding. Considering the advances in mattress manufacture, I could have made some recommendations. I mean, this bed just didn’t give anything under his aerial assault; the bedclothes could have been made of cement.
An arm stretched inside the room, and pulled the door closed. “Goodnight, your highness.”
Oh boy, not only a cold, dark bedroom, but a brat to contend with.
“Me solum relinquatis!” he yelled over his shoulder at the closed door.
Wow, that surprised me for a comeback. I know Latin when I hear it. At eighteen, I’d done a year’s work placement at a lawyer’s firm back in Farmington, Connecticut, and although I didn’t know exactly what he’d said, it had sounded pretty good.
Then he began muttering under his breath, his hands tightly clasped.
Praying? Even under the illumination of the candles, it was difficult to tell.
Then he confirmed it by rolling over onto his back and crossing himself. With a petulant breath aimed accurately at each candle, he threw the room into total darkness.
In minutes, the sounds of light snoring drifted across the void.
I sighed in relief.
Keeping my back to the wall, and considering the debris on the floor, I moved as quietly as I could along to a heavily curtained window, and slipped behind the thick dark drapes. My fingers met a cold stone lintel, and I recoiled in shock; man, the stone felt icy cold. The windows were misted completely, and i
t took me several minutes to get clear a patch, then let it dry so I could see outside.
It looked as dark as pitch from my window to whatever horizon existed. I could vaguely see the tops of trees, and a long, sliver of a moon behind some dark scuffing clouds, but little else. No artificial lights to give me a clue of where I had ended up.
Nothing.
Keeping behind the curtain, I lifted a foot and dragged my boot off. I flinched as my foot returned to the floor though; even through the dried grasses it seemed that every surface in this house felt cold!
With my boots in my hands, I proceeded to creep across the room, still crunching with every step, and headed for the door. Thankfully there were no creaky floorboards to contend with, but the stone did feel icy under my bare feet.
I turned the handle, conscious that I’d be silhouetted from the bed, but certain if I was discovered and the alarm raised, my vampire speed would take me out of any trouble. As I held the door ajar, the corridor beyond looked relatively dark, and candles high on the wall at regular intervals gave a semblance of light. Grasses and dried leaves of many kinds covered the floors here, too. A man sat on a stiff-backed chair right by the side of the lintel, his head dropping in weariness. I gave a deep breath and sped away, paying him little attention, leaving the sleepy man to contend with the now-open door.
Once around the corner I slowed, my breath going before me. I walked along corridors of closed doors, listening carefully at each. It seemed that either the whole floor had gone to bed, or the brat had left the party early.
At last I came to stone stairs leading downwards, then onto a wooden minstrel’s gallery, overlooking a room below. I crept forward to see three occupants crowded around the remnants of a huge fire. Logs burned red in the stone hearth. I looked at the flickering candles on the high candelabra and the taut rope anchored below, holding it in place.
Stone walls loomed high above me, heavy wooden trusses held up a dark, smoke-filled ceiling; this was indeed a castle.
In the room below, two women wore huge dresses, Elizabethan or something; definitely renaissance festival garb. The single guy, in dark doublet, tights, and still wearing his feathered hat, sipped at a small glass, and encouraged his companions to do the same. A long sword hung from his waist, almost to the ground.
“The Prince will be sleeping before he knows,” the elder woman giggled as she spoke. “I lace his evening drink with my ‘special’ mixture every night. Have done for years.” She looked on the portly side, not really my taste, but she had an engaging smile. Her brown hair was pulled severely from her forehead, resulting in a bun arrangement behind.
“Then we can retire to your room?” The man nudged the side of her exposed cleavage.
They both giggled. The younger woman, more a girl really, smiled politely.
“But, my dear Sir Clive, what would your wife think?”
Sir Clive laughed in an exaggerated way, perhaps more influenced by the drink than I’d first thought. He looked older than the ladies, maybe fortyish, and although his wide-brimmed hat hid most of his features from my high position, his bushy black beard and mustache held a peppering of grey. “Why, Mistress Phillipa, she would think naught, as she has no notion I still manage ink in my quill!” And he chortled at his own joke.
The ladies pretended to blush, exchanging glances, but did not disengage from his company; in fact they allowed Sir Clive to top up their glasses.
The younger girl looked by far the prettier of the two, slim and willowy, she wore her fair hair in a ponytail, looking far less austere than Phillipa, but she stayed silent, except to laugh, which they did a lot. Looking down on their considerable cleavages, my vampire hormones started to come to the fore. Bare necks meant a meal, and these two had placed themselves firmly on the platter.
“Perhaps we can encourage young Eleanor here to join us?” He nuzzled closer to the young girl.
“Oh, I am quite certain I could entertain you on my own.” Phillipa checked him, moving protectively towards the young girl; sixteen, seventeen maybe.
Sir Clive gave a huge grin, satisfied that his strategy had worked. “And how will you entertain me?” He leant close to her bosom, breathing low onto her pale skin.
His whiskers must have been tickling, for she moved instinctively away. “Oh, trust me, Sir Clive, I can be very inventive.”
I mentally pleaded with Mistress Phillipa to take Clive away, leaving Eleanor in my grasp, but it seemed that after hooking her fish, she gave little concern to its further capture. After finishing their drinks, taking Eleanor by the hand, a grinning Phillipa breezed past the poor man, leaving him languishing in their wake.
“Perhaps another time, Sir Clive.”
They disappeared below, and I heard their footsteps on a staircase. Turning, I raced to the door behind me, just in time to see the pair pass by.
“And that, dearest Eleanor, is how we get free drinks at the end of the day.” They both giggled into their hands as they passed, neither of them giving my open doorway a second glance. “Cook cannot complain if Sir Clive is pouring.”
“I understand, Mistress.” Eleanor voiced her opinion in a strange, lilting accent; the first time I’d heard her speak. Her voice lay heavy with regional English overtones I couldn’t easily place.
“I hope so; it could lift you in station one day.”
I followed, one corner behind, and watched them bid each other goodnight, then enter different rooms. I memorized the location of both Phillipa’s and Eleanor’s doors, then retraced my steps back past the minstrel gallery door to find another staircase downwards.
Once on the ground floor, I began to map the structure in my mind, while continually looking for some idea of where we actually were. To my astonishment, I began to realize that the building lay devoid of all modern appliances.
No electricity outlets, no phones; in fact, no invention past the sixteenth century. Smoky candles provided the only method of lighting, and log fires seemed to be the only heating source.
The entire floor seemed deserted, Sir Clive obviously having already removed himself for the night.
Then I also noticed another notable omission; clocks.
No timepieces of any kind whatsoever.
My mind had already jumped to a conclusion that would be difficult to fathom, but then, going from a vampire struggle to a dark bedroom also beggared my belief system.
I followed my nose outside into a dark courtyard, and then inside again, landing in the kitchen.
Yup, totally stone age.
Still no electricity, but also no ducting for the wood-burning stoves that lined one long wall. I looked behind them, and found nothing. The smoke from the stoves would rise into the rafters high above. I looked up for some sign of a chimney, but again came up wanting.
I walked back outside to the courtyard. In the darkness I could make out an archway, and a road beyond. No gate barred the arch, but two soldiers stood on either side. I retraced my steps past the kitchen, and back into the building where the apartments lay.
With my mind in turmoil, I raced back upstairs to Phillipa’s room, listened at the door, then slipped inside. I raced to her bed before she could even think of shouting an alarm, and clamped my hand over her mouth.
“Mistress Phillipa.” I looked deep into her eyes and allowed my vampire breath to pass over her face. “I mean you no harm, do you understand me?” Confident my pheromones would calm her, turning her submissive and pliable.
Captive in my hands, she nodded, her eyes blinking at me.
“I need answers to some questions, and I don’t want you to call out, okay?”
Her brows furrowed, seemingly unable to understand my instructions fully. She looked from my face to my Pink Floyd T-shirt. “You wish me to remain silent?” She spoke quietly through my fingers.
“Yes,” I said finding her sudden obtrusiveness annoying. I mean, come on, my Connecticut accent wasn’t that difficult to understand. “Just answer my questions. Where ar
e we?” I relaxed my hand from her mouth.
“Why, good sir, we are in my bedchamber.”
I shook my head in frustration. “What place is this? What building is this?”
She looked at me like she’d seen a madman, her eyebrows all furrowed low on her pretty plump face.
“I came in off the road, lost in the darkness.” I strove in my mind to become more ‘period’, more old fashioned, for it seemed she only understood that mannerism. I thought of an Amish community, and tried to affect such an ‘olden day’ cadence to my speech. “I only wish to be told where I am.”
“Why, sire, you are in Ludlow Castle.”
Well, I’d been in Connecticut for many years, surrounded on all sides by English-sounding place names, but Ludlow had never been mentioned. “What county?”
She looked at me oddly. “I believe we are in Shropshire, sire.”
“Never heard of it.”
She flinched from me. “Beg pardon, sire?”
“Why, Phillipa, I have never heard of a Connecticut county called Shropshire.”
She began to edge away from me, despite my grip on her body. “Sir, you speak strangely, your dress is… strange, and you press me for answers which I seem not to have.”
I moved closer, holding her head in as gentle a vice grip as I could. “I’m getting fucking sick of this ‘Olde Worlde’ bullshit!” I railed through clenched teeth. I let my breath slowly cascade over her face. “Tell me the truth, Phillipa, only the truth. Do you understand?” She nodded, her eyes clouding somewhat; her last resistance to my questioning now extinguished. “Where are we?”
“Ludlow Castle, sire.”
“And where exactly in the world is Ludlow Castle, Phillipa?”
She paused. “In England, sire, near the Welsh border.”
Crap; not the answer I’d expected.
I felt a twitching in my body as my mind dealt with the information. What she’d told me seemed beyond the pale, beyond my imagination. And yet I’d travelled from the grip of a spinning vampire to being alone in a dark bedroom, and I did not question that.
