B004H0M8IQ EBOK

by Worth, Sandra

  Here and there a guard snored at the foot of a tower. Hidden in the shadows, Richard stayed close to the walls and moved to the Salt Tower, keeping an eye out for the foot patrols. As their rhythmic footsteps approached, he flattened himself against a wall, not breathing until the sound of their march had faded away. With rope in hand, he stole along to the staircase of the Cradle Tower near Traitor’s Gate. His heart hammered in his breast as he took the steps two by two and neared the entrance to the rooftop. What would he do if the gate were locked? It would take time to pry it open with the dagger they’d allowed him to keep, for the blade was barely long enough to cut his meat. Let it be open—let it not be—

  God be praised—his prayer was answered! He crossed himself. The gate was open. Removing the coil of rope from his shoulders, he tied one end securely to the bracket that held the flagpole for the pennant and threw a glance over the side of the wall. Nothing but silence.

  The work of escape was strenuous; by midway of scaling the wall, he was panting. He hung helplessly in the darkness until he had caught his breath again. The rope was only a few feet short of the ground, and he marveled at how well matters had gone. His escape—logistically so difficult—had proven incredibly easy to accomplish.

  He dropped to the ground, scrambled to his feet, and made for the river. He had gone only a few feet when out of the darkness, at a distance of about five hundred feet, voices drifted to him and a group of men with torches appeared, striding purposefully toward him along the wharf. He couldn’t hear what they said, but they were looking around, as if searching for something—or someone.

  God Almighty—had this been a trap? If he was going to escape, he needed to take his chances—now! He ran to the edge of the river and quickly lowered himself into the icy water. The river was shallow and he found himself knee-deep in the boggy marsh on the edge. He staggered forward a few steps before he realized there wasn’t enough time to reach the reed beds or the deeper water that would offer full cover. Inhaling deeply, he flattened himself into the mud, holding his breath while he shivered with cold.

  The voices came closer. They stopped and grew faint again. They were going back the opposite way! He caught a snippet of their words, and it sent him quivering where he lay.

  “—four boats are looking for—”

  He opened his eyes. They had to be talking about him. If they were already searching for him, there was no time to lose! To get away, he had to outwit them somehow—go where they didn’t expect him to—west, not east—

  Aye, he had to change his plans—that was the only hope! But where could he go? And how? He couldn’t swim upstream, or walk along the river. Unless—maybe on the south side? He’d have to swim across, make his way through marshland. That would not be easy. The reeds would help give him some cover, but their growth had been stunted by the drought and heat, and they were not tall enough to hide a man. Cautiously, he lifted himself up and peered into the shadows. The men’s flaming torches were disappearing from view. He scanned the river. There was nothing but the gentle lapping of water. Now! he told himself. He dove underwater and swam as long as he could without coming up for air. Only when his lungs felt as if they would burst did he allow himself to emerge from the black water. Inhaling again, he ducked his head again and kept swimming.

  At last he reached the south bank of the Thames. Wearily, he climbed out into the marsh. Then he ran.

  Tripping over the uneven ground and the tangles of reeds, he pushed forward in a southwesterly direction to the woods, past the marshland. He had to reach them by daybreak or he’d be seen. There was little time left! He felt chilled now that he was in the open air, and he was exhausted from swimming against the tide, but fear didn’t allow him to rest. Stumbling and falling, scratched and bruised, he pushed on. For the night was filled not only with the hooting of hunting owls, but with the distant baying of hounds, and the shouts of men.

  Chapter 13

  Winds of Winter

  Richard made it to the woods as the faint light of day touched the earth. And still he ran. When he could go no farther, he leaned his weight against a tree and slid down to the ground. Gasping for breath, he covered his face in his hands and gave vent to wracking sobs. It seemed to him that he’d been running from the hounds for most of his life—with one glorious, and all too brief respite. Scotland. Catherine’s face rose before him. My love, do not weep, ’tis but an evil dream, and see, you have awakened now and all is well.

  But only death could relieve this nightmare. He knew that now. His life was penance for the sin of spurning death at Taunton. He had run from Taunton because life had held such sweetness then, such hope—but why was he running now, when he hated life, when it brought only despair?

  The Tudor’s own great-grandfather had run from the king’s men, as he himself was doing now, and had made it to safety and freedom. It was because that ancestor of his arch-foe had cheated death that Richard found himself under this tree now. Meredyd Ap Tudor was a Welshman wanted for debt and murder in England. His son, Owen, had bedded the young queen, Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V. She had produced Henry’s father, Edmund, out of wedlock, and Edmund had wed Margaret Beaufort, also of bastard descent. Now a thorough bastard sat the throne of England and hunted down a king’s son.

  Richard laughed until he wept.

  When his tears finally subsided, he looked around. The balmy air was scented with flowering hawthorn and elderberries, and above him stretched the most beautiful sunrise he’d ever seen. Crimson, violet, and orange stained the heavens, shining a rose glow over the earth and all creation. He heard the gurgle of a stream nearby. For a brief moment, a deep peace found him. He had never felt such harmony with the world, except at Loch Lomond, and still this was different. He felt a oneness with God that he had never known before.

  The baying of hounds along the river broke into his thoughts. He scrambled to his feet. Pushing aside the branches that blocked his way, leaping over the brambles and nettles in his path, he ran.

  Ran for his life.

  A fitful morning light broke over the Tower. In her bed, Catherine turned her face to the window. As usual, her sleep had been marred by bad dreams. No wonder, for her mind had been filled with dread since she had given Richard her blessing to escape three days ago. Each night when she went to bed and each morning when she awakened, the same thought came to her: Was this the day?

  Something mingled with the ravens’ ugly cries this morning. Something unsettling. The clanging of arms. The shouts of men. Catherine hurried into her slippers and wrapped her chamber robe around her with trembling hands. She stepped over Alice, who was still asleep on her pallet on the floor. She went to the window and looked out. An army of small craft barred traffic on the river, and the wharf swarmed with men-at-arms. This is the day! Catherine thought.

  This is the day.

  With Alice’s help, Catherine’s toilette was nearly complete. Her hair had been twisted and looped into her silver net at the nape of her neck, and her headband and veil were barely secured in place when the dreaded knock came at the door. Alice opened it to reveal Henry’s squire, James Strangeways. Her mouth tightened to see him, and behind her, Catherine’s did the same. He was the one who had brought her the king’s gift of a gown, and Catherine hadn’t forgiven him for it.

  “My lady,” James Strangeways said courteously, with a formal bow, “the king requests your presence in his privy chamber.”

  At least he isn’t wearing his usual smirk, Catherine thought. She acknowledged him with a brusque nod, and swept past him with her head held high. Hurriedly, he fell in behind her, quickening his pace to match hers as she led the way to the king’s privy chambers along the twisting passageways. When they arrived, one of the two hundred yeomen guarding the area threw the door open to the royal chamber. Strangeways announced her to the king and she sailed past him into the room.

  Catherine saw Henry turn from the window. His face wore a hard expression. She did not know as she ap
proached and fell into a curtsy that, like her, he had not slept all night. While she feared Richard would be caught, Henry feared he wouldn’t. His plans had gone awry during the night, and somehow the prey that should have been delivered safely to him by now had eluded the net he’d thrown over London. He worried that Margaret of Burgundy had finally succeeded in getting a plot past his spies and that the Pretender had already been spirited to safety aboard a ship bound for Burgundy. The calm demeanor he presented to Catherine was a calculated stillness that he had honed over the years; it had served him well by unnerving the subject of his scrutiny. But in truth, he was restless with anxiety.

  Henry didn’t stir or speak as Catherine rose from her obeisance and waited before him. He merely stared at her.

  For Catherine it was as if she had gone back in time and was a child again, face to face with the serpent in the field. Her father had slain the hideous creature, and saved her then. But who could save her now? No one but herself. She lifted her chin.

  As Henry looked at her, he wondered what it was about this girl that he found so utterly entrancing. He had seen beauties before. He’d taken what he’d wanted, given them a few groats for their service, and dismissed them without another thought. But Catherine Gordon he could not dismiss. She was an intoxicating perfume that lingered around him; she had struck his very soul and would not fade away, no matter how hard he tried to be rid of her. She kept her eyes down, yet he sensed her defiance. Was her confidence placed in him, or in herself? Did she think he could never hurt her, or did her royal blood give her the strength to defy him—and deny him? She was a Huntly, after all, and came from the finest stock of Scotland. Was this the reason he couldn’t intimidate her the way he did everyone else? Was her noble birth the reason he desired her so desperately—to prove himself her equal? All his life, he had been taunted for his bastard blood and made to feel inferior, and now that he was king, he distrusted those better-born than himself, and favored those who, like him, shared his bastard lineage. In her veins ran the noblest blood of Britannia, and if she took him as her lover, it would mean he’d proved himself her equal.

  Yet there was more. The girl had a courage he’d never seen before in any woman except his mother. But in overcoming her challenges, Margaret had grown hard and brittle as an old broom, while Catherine had a vulnerability about her that tugged at him. He longed to protect her, to gratify her every whim, to share with her his earthly treasures—if she would but let him. His need for her was so great that he’d toyed with the idea of taking possession of her body against her will, but doing so would have proved a hollow victory. She would elude him still, and hate him more.

  “What have you to say for yourself?” he demanded coldly.

  “I do not understand, Sire. What am I accused of?”

  “Don’t play games with me! You knew he was planning to escape!” said Henry. For the first time in an audience, he found he was the one unnerved.

  “Nay, my lord, I tried to dissuade him from it.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “’Tis the truth.”

  “You helped him. You sold your jewel. You gave him money!”

  “It was my duty to do so. A woman’s property belongs to her lawfully wedded husband.”

  Henry slammed his fist on the table. “After all I have done for you! All the kindness I’ve shown you—I have been merciful beyond belief—and this is how you repay me!”

  “I could not stop him, Sire!” Catherine cried, suddenly fearful, for Henry trembled with rage.

  “Who helped him?” Henry demanded.

  “No one.”

  “You lie—tell me the truth for once!” In two quick strides he had closed the distance between them. He seized her by both arms.

  Catherine dropped her gaze and turned her face away from his. “I swear by my mother’s soul, ’tis truth. No one helped him. He did it alone.”

  “How could he evade so many men if he did it alone—” Henry broke off, suddenly realizing that he was giving himself away. No one must see your hand in this, Morton had warned. He released her. “If he was alone, then he shall soon be caught. Do you know what I shall do to him when I get him back?” He spoke the words in a hiss, and it was the serpent in the field that Catherine heard.

  She turned her head and looked at him then. He was watching her with a chilling smile on his lips.

  Henry read her thoughts. No, don’t tell her—if you hope to ever win her affections, she must never know.

  As Catherine waited, Henry’s demeanor changed. The mad look that had flashed in his eyes vanished, and in an instant he was again the cold, calculating man she knew.

  “You must pay for what you have done,” Henry said calmly. “Your allowance will be reduced, and your status diminished. As for your ladies-in-waiting, henceforth you are permitted only one. I leave to you the choice of which shall be put into the streets.”

  There was no doubt whom Catherine would choose to stay. Alice was kin, friend, as well as servant. The Tudor spies would find good homes, but what about dear Agatha—she had no one, and Catherine had no money to give her. What would become of her? “My lord, I pray you to reconsider—”

  “Perhaps I will . . . On one condition,” said Henry.

  Catherine waited.

  “That you divorce him and look on me with favor.”

  Catherine gasped. Through the roaring in her head, she breathed, “No!” She closed her eyes to steady herself.

  “You will be sorry—you will regret this—I will make you pay!” Henry shouted, trembling with rage. “And when I catch him, know that he will pay—pay dearly—dearly, you hear me? Dearly—” With each word, he took a step closer to Catherine, forcing her to edge backward. “Now, go!”

  She turned and ran, sobs stifling her breath, tears running down her cheeks.

  “Go!!” she heard him shout after her.

  Richard emerged at the edge of the woods, drained by the night’s ordeal. Beads of perspiration streamed down his face, stinging his eyes with salt and blurring his vision. He wiped them with the back of his torn sleeve and pulled down a branch to see what lay in the distance. His heart pounded so violently in his chest, he was afraid he would collapse if he didn’t find help soon. Where could he go? Who would dare give him shelter? There had to be someplace—

  He saw that he had made it to Richmond. There on the hill at the edge of the riverbank had stood the palace of Shene that he’d burned down in his bungled attempt to escape at Yuletide. Now only a few charred remnants of towers and a few walls remained as monument. Soon these would be torn down to make room for an even more splendid Tudor palace. He scanned the rolling hills and spied the tower of a church on the north edge of the royal property. Standing next to it was the Carthusian monastery known as the Charterhouse of Shene. His heart missed a beat. There—they would help! The place had Yorkist connections! A prior of Charterhouse had been an executor of his mother’s will! The men who dwelt there were true men of God. They had renounced the world for solitude, hair shirts, and endless prayer—

  The yapping of hounds sounded again, more distantly now, but fright overwhelmed him. There was no time to rest—no time to think! He threw a glance behind, expecting to see them leap from the woods, but the forest was still. He ran from the covering of the thicket and dashed across the fields. He leapt over stone walls, and pushed through hedgerows. He had seen the prior once at Shene, but only from the distance when he came to deliver a Yuletide gift. Prior Ralph Tracy was held in high favor by the tyrant.

  The few peasants in the fields paid him scant attention as he stumbled past the monastery’s high wall into the outer courtyard where the cells of the monks were clustered. Dragging himself past the next building that housed the forge, the carpenter’s shop, and the kitchen, he burst into the inner courtyard, yanked open the great door, and hurtled into the church, reeling from pillar to pillar until he crashed into a monk at the altar and fell to the floor at his feet. The man recoiled with sho
ck. He was not accustomed to intrusions of such violent nature in this quiet place. Guests were never welcome, for the Carthusians were a reclusive order that had already withdrawn from the earthly world and lived only for the day when their bodies would join the souls they had already given over to heaven. They preserved silence and left their cells solely for mass and to attend their duties. They even avoided one another; each monk’s cell had a tiny walled garden where he could sit in total privacy.

  Into this holy order had Richard crashed. He tried to release his hold of the man’s legs, but his arms were frozen and he could not move them. “Forgive me—” he panted, licking his lips, for his mouth was suddenly as dry as parchment. “The prior, I pray you—’tis urgent—urgent—”

  The man pried Richard’s fingers loose from his leg and freed himself. Dimly, Richard became aware of his surroundings. A few smoky candles of mutton fat flickered around the interior, and from these emanated an unpleasant odor and more shadows. Shivering, he shrank back. In shadows lurked danger and death. He seized a corner of the crimson altar cloth as if it could protect him, and lifting his eyes to the cross, sent a rushed and feverish prayer to heaven.

  A door creaked open. Two monks entered, one old, one young, both clad in white. The older one was gaunt, his face deeply wrinkled with thin silver hair around his tonsure.

  “You wished to see me, my son?” Prior Ralph said gently, his compassion stirred by the quivering mass sprawled at his feet. The monk at his side extended a hand to Richard to raise him up.

  Richard gradually managed to come to his feet, though he listed to one side and had to lean on the altar rail for support. Prior Ralph was taken aback to see a young lissome body in the prime of life struggle so, flinching as if every movement hurt. When the young man looked at him, he was shocked by the fear he saw in his blue eyes. The cuts and bloody bruises on his face, head, arms, and legs suggested a wretched story, but he didn’t look like a thief or a murderer.