The 48

by Donna Hosie

  My stomach had knotted at the sight of Thomas Ladman, but I clenched my teeth together and pulled my shoulders back. My heart did not belong to me; I was not even sure I had one anymore. I was playing the game of survival now.

  In a different time, in a different land, perchance Thomas and I could have raised a family and been happy.

  Yet this was our land. And our time was now. And both were cruel.

  I could smell wine and smoke and cheap perfume on Thomas’s uniform of the guard. A sickness rose in my throat, which I pushed down. It deepened my resolve.

  Thomas Ladman was below me in every way. It had been a foolish, childish dream to believe we could be together. He was a bastard son of a duke, all but forsaken by his family.

  “Never speak to me again, Thomas,” I hissed. “Or I will go to the king and claim you’ve been stealing from the courtiers.”

  “You would never—”

  “I would. I would without a second thought. You would lose your head and your entrails…”

  “What has happened to you? Where has the woman I loved gone?”

  “I have seen things here that would make your hair turn white,” I replied. “Go back to your kitchen girls and beggar women. It’s all you’re good for.”

  * * *

  —

  My father had been right after all. I was highborn. I deserved better.

  I would have better.

  The following week passed in a blur of rain, boring council meetings with an increasingly overwrought king who liked to yell in Latin when he was humiliating certain overseas envoys, indoor archery, and even more rain. I was wet from the moment I woke to the moment I fell asleep. The dampness aided the foul mood that had started to creep into daily life around the palace.

  The only people who didn’t seem foul-tempered were my brother, Lady Margaret, and Jane Seymour. After the dramatic first twenty-four hours, Alex had quickly fallen back in love with court life and spent nearly every available moment dragging me off to see some new part of the palace. The one time I saw him annoyed was when we were shown the maze by the young sons of two dukes. The boys were affable but barely eleven years old. We got hopelessly lost, were caught up in another shower, and ended up bedraggled and on the verge of hypothermia before dinner.

  Alliances were already being sought for the two of us, and because Aramis had left us and gone back to the future, Alex and I had to navigate everything by ourselves without causing offense. Thankfully, Lady Margaret was proving to be very helpful in this regard. We welcomed her friendship not only because she had saved my life, but also because she was close to Jane. And Alice was right; Alex and I also needed to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t talk about my poisoning. The sons of Cleves shouldn’t be on anyone’s watch list.

  Rain and gloom aside, the court would have been wholly fascinating if it hadn’t also been so inherently depressing. Young women who had barely reached adolescence were being farmed out like cattle by their relatives. Boys and girls who couldn’t have been older than six or seven were in the service of the palace, and the work they did was such intense labor it was a wonder their little bodies didn’t break. The highborn were also very free with the backs of their hands, slapping the children if something wasn’t cleared away quickly enough. It was so wrong it made me feel ill. And it wasn’t lost on me that, in a way, we were actively participating in all this. Our orders were to find a Protestant partner for the king. TOD would be perfectly happy with anyone we found, but the king wouldn’t be interested in someone his own age, who’d be less likely to give him an heir.

  The more I thought about this assignment in those terms, the more it troubled me. Because choices were part of what made people human, whether it was a choice of love or religion, or anything else. When I really thought about it, it seemed to me that love and religion could bring a lot of happiness and peace and joy to humankind. And artistic inspiration. And acts of kindness. When it came right down to it, choices breathed a lot of the humanness into the humanity TOD claimed to want to preserve.

  But then, I told myself, I was one of The 48. It wasn’t as if we were allowed choices either. Our lives were dictated to us as much as anyone else’s.

  It wasn’t a nicer frame of mind.

  But it was easier.

  * * *

  —

  Jane Seymour was being manipulated by relatives too, but the more I observed her in action, the more I wondered whether a match with the king was actually something she wanted. Jane was subtle, the complete opposite of Anne Boleyn, who swept through the palace like a tornado. Jane had a soft, soothing voice, and when she offered an opinion, it was measured and sensible. I found myself seeking her out at court because I found her attitude refreshing. Maybe it helped that Jane was at least a decade older than some of the other girls, some of whom would have been in seventh grade back in the twenty-first century.

  Jane and I routinely came across each other in the Great Hall. Taking inventory of the paintings there was becoming part of my daily routine, to ensure that I knew where they were at all times.

  “It is an impressive piece, don’t you think, Charles?” said Jane quietly. She was already there one morning, as if waiting for me—although there were others in the room, including her brother, who was whispering in a corner to a heavyset man with body odor I could smell from twenty feet away.

  Jane was staring at the Hans Holbein painting of the king. The hairs on my arms prickled when I got close to it. I suspected that my body, so recently assaulted by radiation and time travel, was responding to the radiation of the artwork. It was reassuring. It meant the energy loop was still there.

  “Master Holbein is very talented,” I replied.

  “I would very much like him to paint me one day, yet, alas, I am too inconsequential.”

  “You are anything but, milady,” I replied.

  “You are kind, Charles of Cleves. And you have a pleasing influence on the king. He talks fondly of you.”

  “I am honored the king pays any attention at all to me.”

  “We are all in his service, so to be especially noticed is a great honor.” She looked hard at the painting. “Yet those in his favor must also have caution. If you would take some advice from a mere woman, I would counsel you to listen more than you speak.”

  “Do not belittle yourself, milady,” I replied. “And your counsel is most welcome. All of your words are. You are the wisest of all the queen’s ladies and maids of honor.”

  Jane smiled, curtsied, and glided away as if she were floating. Her words stayed with me long after she was gone. But the truth was, I didn’t have the luxury of listening more than I spoke. The clock was ticking, and Alex and I had a lot to convince Henry of before our time expired.

  * * *

  —

  Alice kept me up to date with reports every evening on Anne. She would sneak into my room and we would huddle under blankets that had been warmed in front of the fire. The 48 wouldn’t approve, but Aramis wasn’t around to stop us. And I kind of liked how it was a hold on reality—my reality.

  “The queen is so unhappy, I think I heard her vomiting in her bedroom,” reported Alice one night.

  “Could she be pregnant?” I asked.

  Alice shook her head and wiggled to take more of the blanket.

  “Not a chance. The king won’t have her anywhere near him. And now Cromwell is also refusing to see her. She was raging because he always used to be on her side and now she can’t get an audience with the king’s advisors, let alone Henry. Everyone is deserting her. Her ladies-in-waiting and maids of honor are terrified. Except Lady Rochford. She hates Anne with a passion that is almost psychotic. I wish you could see her, Charlie. I swear she sits there just smiling as the queen screams at everyone.”

  I actually wanted to help the queen. I wanted to tell her to get on a ship with her youn
g daughter, Elizabeth, and sail to France. Her life in the palace was only going to get worse—and then it would end.

  And then there was Alice’s situation. If Grinch really had dragged Alice back here, where was she?

  “Any sign of our favorite green Asset?” I asked.

  Alice closed her eyes. “No.”

  I left it at that. Forty-eight days had become thirty-eight on the countdown in my wrist, and I was becoming less and less confident about the time we had left to succeed at anything.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning I was awakened by a harsh knock at my door. I opened it to find Edward Seymour waiting for me. He strode right in, not bothering to address me by my name or follow basic formalities like bowing.

  “I tried your brother’s room, but he appears to be out and about,” he said sharply. “He is to accompany me to Wulfhall. I have neither the time nor the inclination to wait for him, so you will pass the message on. We leave tomorrow. A two-day ride. I take it he can ride?”

  “Y-yes, he can, but my brother is not going anywhere,” I said, my stomach twisting.

  Seymour moved toward me. I was taller, and yet his arrogance made him seem larger than life.

  “The king has decreed it.”

  And I knew that was all he had to say. Stone-faced, I closed the door, dressed, and left to eat, attend court, be on the lookout for a Protestant prospect for Henry, and, with any luck, find my brother along the way.

  * * *

  —

  It wasn’t until afternoon that I finally caught up with Alex near the Base Court.

  “I’ve been trying to find you all day,” I said furiously. “Where have you been? Because I’ve been at court since breakfast enduring too much food and kiss-ass, two-faced courtiers. And the company of a bombastic king who wouldn’t let me out of his sight and asked for constitutional advice about the Duchy of Cornwall. For all I know, I’ve declared war against Wales and increased the taxes on sausages. Speaking Tudor English all day with a German accent is exhausting, but finding you when I need you is impossible. My brain is fried.”

  “Finished ranting?” replied Alex. “Because I’ve been collecting information.”

  “With Marlon?”

  “With Marlon, yes. We talked, and I talked with his friends, too. The yeomen know every nook in this palace, Charlie,” replied Alex evenly. “They’re better informed than anyone. You should use them more as allies instead of hanging out with the two-faced courtiers. The guards listen in on every council meeting and stand outside every door. They know more about what goes on here than the king. Yeomen might have the weapons to stab you in the back, but the courtiers are the ones who would actually do it. And the yeomen are good for a laugh. Most of them are our age. We’re not that different, really.”

  I sighed and looked down at my wrist.

  38 22:18:01

  “What’s up?” asked Alex. “You’re very quiet, especially seeing as practically every single person in the palace has told me you were looking for me.”

  My neck was stiff with tension. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said.

  I waited until we were in a long, empty corridor before I told my brother the bad news.

  “You’re being sent away,” I whispered.

  “What?” said Alex with a laugh. “No one can send me away.”

  “Edward Seymour has demanded that you accompany him on a trip to Wulfhall. The king has decreed it. A two-day ride.”

  Alex made a strange noise through his nose.

  “Why me?”

  “No idea,” I replied. The truth was, I had several thoughts, from Seymour wanting to make a Cleves alliance, to Seymour wanting to kill a Cleves and make it look like an accident.

  An image of grapes swam into my mind.

  “We can try to get you out of it,” I said.

  “Unlikely, if the king has decreed it.”

  A heavy silence surrounded us. Two brains working as one, trying to see a way out of a real test to the assignment.

  “We could use this to our advantage,” said Alex eventually. “Seymour is promoting his sister as an alternative queen. With him gone, you can really step it up around here.”

  “But we shouldn’t be apart; we haven’t even formed a strategy beyond information-gathering—”

  “Charles,” interrupted Alex. “You’re better off here. Alice needs you, even if she would never admit it. If wherever we’re going is a two-day ride, I’ll be away for four days, five at the most. Edward Seymour won’t want to stay away longer. And this could be the push we need to actually make a more strategic movement. We have plenty of time before the assignment goes critical.”

  I wasn’t so sure I agreed. An assignment entered the critical countdown at day fourteen. From that time until the second our wrists displayed zeros was the period when assignments succeeded or failed. When Assets returned to the present day as heroes or failures.

  It was when Alex and I would have to decide whether to assassinate Jane Seymour or not. And time seemed to be moving faster every time I looked at my wrist.

  “You’re taking this better than I did,” I said. “I thought I was going to throw up when I heard.”

  “Aw, that’s sweet,” said Alex, smirking. “Don’t worry. You just work on the king while I’m gone. You’ve had some nice conversations with Jane Seymour. I know you’re asking Henry about other women to feel him out. Did you know Henry was seen going into someone else’s bedroom last night? That’s one piece of info I got from the yeomen earlier.”

  “The clan of Wulfhall are no better than pimps,” I muttered.

  “I hate to break it to you, brother,” said Alex. “But you and I aren’t much better, doing this assignment.”

  “I know. I’ve been thinking a lot about that.”

  “I’ve been trying not to. Because honestly, it makes me nauseous.” He rubbed his wrist absentmindedly. “You know what I’ve been thinking? I’ve been thinking Senior Assets didn’t get so cold from years of training. I think it’s psychological. From years of playing with people’s lives.”

  “You know if Jane doesn’t marry the king and have his son, she’ll probably live longer,” I said. “This assignment could end up saving her, if we don’t have to…you know.” I couldn’t quite say the words aloud.

  “You’re starting to like Jane, aren’t you?”

  “She’s just not what I was expecting,” I replied.

  “I’d better come back to find you with your head still attached.”

  “Just come back, Alex,” I said.

  Two doors suddenly slammed in quick succession. Alex and I had our knives drawn within a second. It was reflex.

  Two ladies-in-waiting walked slowly into the corridor where Alex and I had been talking. I recognized one as Lady Rochford, the sister-in-law of the queen. The other was no more than thirteen years old. She looked like a child playing dress-up.

  The ladies dipped into small curtsies and we bowed. No wonder people stopped doing that a few centuries later. My back hurt from all the stretching and bending.

  “The queen has commanded your presence, Charles of Cleves,” said Lady Rochford stiffly. She seemed to talk without moving her mouth. “It’s getting late. I wouldn’t keep her waiting.”

  She gave a sly glance to her companion, dipped again, and glided away past two servants who were starting to light the multitude of candles that lined every corridor.

  “Watch your back around that one,” I muttered. “Alice was filling me in on the women in the court. Lady Rochford hates the queen more than Cromwell does. She’s planning something.”

  My brother hugged me. It was fleeting.

  “I’d better start packing,” he said.

  “I want you back in five days,” I said.

  I wanted to hug my brother back. For long
er than a fleeting connection.

  Instead, I let him leave.

  Should I have left Charlie? Did I have a choice? Edward Seymour and two others had business away and had requested I accompany them. The king had said yes.

  No one argued with the king and stayed out of the Tower.

  * * *

  —

  We were heading for Wulfhall: the ancestral seat of the Seymour family. I knew about the manor house because I had researched it. Charlie was worried about our being separated, but I saw this as quite the stroke of luck. This would give me the chance to ingratiate myself even more with the Seymours. And the more information Charlie and I had on them, the quicker we could use it to our advantage to get Jane away from the king.

  It took two days to ride to Wiltshire from Hampton Court. We spent our first night at an inn, where I was kept awake for the first couple of hours by the fleas in the straw mattress. There wasn’t an inch of skin that they didn’t find delicious at first, but then they just left me alone. Maybe twenty-first-century blood was too weird for them.

  Edward barely spoke to me at first; I wasn’t even sure why he had asked me to come along.

  But I wasn’t anyone’s man—yet. And here, alliances were everything.

  * * *

  —

  Wulfhall was a shabby-looking timber manor house, with a thatched barn, a clock tower, and a tiny chapel in the grounds. Not the grand house I was expecting, and Seymour seemed almost embarrassed by it. I didn’t get a tour. I was just shown to a small bedroom with a little window overlooking a large, tree-lined gravel path.

  Dinner that evening was taken in a long hall that had roaring fires at both ends. An older man, the spitting image of Edward with narrow, mud-colored eyes, a long face, and a long black beard, was sitting at the head of the table, drinking deeply from a pewter goblet. He gave me the briefest of looks as I walked in, but other than that, he didn’t register my existence until Edward introduced us.