Tempting Fate (The Immortal Descendants)

by April White

  A small flinch and a hairline crack appeared in her composure. “My fate is written, Miss Elian.”

  “I’m Saira.”

  She smiled, and we passed Peterson again in silence.

  “One more turn, Milady.” His voice was coarse, and there was a sneer behind it that made me loathe him on principle.

  As soon as we were out of earshot again she whispered to me, and I almost didn’t hear the question. “Are you a virgin, Saira?”

  And because she startled me so much I blurted out the truth. “Yes.”

  “That’s rather unfortunate.”

  I stared at her. “None of my ladies will tell me what it’s like to lay with a man, and I had hoped that perhaps in your time it is a discussion women could have with each other.”

  I finally knew the proper definition of flummoxed, because the future queen of England had just done it to me. I couldn’t even imagine what to say, and before my brain could make my mouth utter a single word, Peterson was on us like stink.

  “Right. Yer done now, Lady. I’ll take ye back to yer apartments, and ye’ll stay in the rest of the night.”

  The Lady Elizabeth slipped her frighteningly regal posture back on and took my arm as we left the Great Hall. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out from under Peterson’s glare, but she solved that problem for me just before we turned up the stairs.

  “Saira, please check the kitchens for me. I believe I must have left my needlework on my lunch tray.”

  “Of course, Milady.” I dipped into the kind of curtsey I’d seen in movies and walked down the hall before Peterson could tell me not to. I heard her ask Peterson the time as they headed upstairs, and I tucked myself around a corner out of sight until his answering voice receded.

  Dudley

  I’d discovered that besides pitch black, the time of day I was least visible was dusk, maybe because people were heading in to deal with evening meals, and whatever came out at night hadn’t emerged yet. I clung to the side of the Royal Apartments until I could sprint across to the base of the White Tower. Across the common I could see Yeoman Warders heading toward the Lord Lieutenant’s Lodgings, presumably for shift changes, and I ducked behind a cannon until two other Yeoman Warders passed headed toward the Royal Apartments. They were probably replacements for Peterson and whomever he worked with. The big guy reminded me a little of Lurch from old Addams Family reruns, so I dubbed his short friend Uncle Fester. Lurch turned to scan the green, and he seemed to be listening to something Uncle Fester couldn’t hear. I shrunk deeper into the shadow of the cannon when his eyes seemed to seek me, like he could hear my heartbeat or something. And then I knew with the certainty of twisty guts that Lurch was at least part Monger, and the other part was something I didn’t even want to think about.

  Lurch must be Alvin.

  I figured I had about five minutes before Peterson left the Royal Apartments, so as soon as the coast was clear I crept along the base of the White Tower and then darted across the open commons to Beauchamp tower. My luck was holding with visible guards and only hitched slightly when I got to the tower door. Locked. Go figure. But just behind St. Vincula’s chapel were the guards’ barracks. If I made it there without being seen, I thought I could get up to the roof to enter Beauchamp tower from the top.

  I clung to the shadows at the base of the wall until I reached the barracks closest to St. Vinculas. The walls were timbered, shadowed, and relatively easy to climb as long as my skirt stayed tied around my waist. I was glad that I hadn’t changed out of my jeans since my makeshift rinse in the courtyard of the inn. If I thought about my general state of griminess too long I’d gross myself out, so I put the idea of clean underwear back in the drawer until I could get a tub of water bigger than my mug. Instead I concentrated on putting hands and feet where they could keep propelling me up.

  The only tricky part was getting onto the roof of the barracks, and it tested my grip in a way I didn’t entirely like. If Archer had been awake when I left he would have been a good climbing partner for this. But I was avoiding Archer because the things I wasn’t saying to him were too loud in my head, which was why I slipped out in the first place.

  Once I made it to the barracks roof, the scramble to the guards’ walk of Beauchamp tower was easy enough, and the scrapes on my palms weren’t deep enough to open the skin. Open wounds were a bad idea in this time, especially with the prevalence of raw sewage everywhere.

  There were people down on Tower Green, and I ducked below the ramparts to crawl across the wall. The door at the top of Beauchamp tower was unlocked, and I took a moment to unwrap the heavy skirts from around my waist. If I ran into someone in the tower I hoped I could pretend to be a servant or something. It was weak at best, and I pulled the hood of my cloak up as if I could hide from my own feeble plan.

  I slipped down the stairs to the top floor of the tower. Bad plan number two hit me upside the head as I looked down the long, pitch-black hall. How was I supposed to find Thomas Wyatt in a space with no exterior windows and no obvious light? Crap. I inhaled sharply and picked a side of the hall to start on. I held a hand out at hip height to run along the wall and stopped at the first indentation of a door. I felt around for a handle and, shock of shocks, found a big iron key sticking out of the lock. Lazy Yeomen had just made my life much easier.

  I turned the key and the door opened with a loud creak. Not a very well-used lock then. The room had a little light coming in from the archer slits in the wall, and I could just barely see it was some sort of storage room. Not what I was looking for, so I re-locked it as quietly as I could manage, left the key in the door, and moved on down the hall.

  The second and third doors also had keys, but held empty cells. The fourth lock moved soundlessly, like it had recently been oiled. I opened that door cautiously and immediately saw candlelight flickering inside.

  A man looked up from the thing he was carving into a stone wall. His expression registered surprise at the opening door, and shock when he realized it was a girl opening it. He stood so suddenly I jumped, and he held his hands out in front of him as if to calm me. One hand held the blunt knife he’d been using on the stone wall, and I suddenly recognized the carving.

  “You’re Robert Dudley.”

  If his eyes had opened any wider his eyeballs might have fallen out. He seemed to realize that possibility because he narrowed them warily. “And you are here for what reason, Milady?”

  “Oh, I’m not a lady. I mean, not like that. I’m Saira.” I was also babbling. He was handsome in a bearded, sixteenth-century way, but that wasn’t why I was so weirdly flustered. Robert Dudley was searching my face in a way that was so … probing. He could have had his hands on my naked body and it wouldn’t have felt as intimate as that look. Damn.

  I took a deep breath to get my nerves under control. If this was the way Dudley looked at women, how could Elizabeth not have hurled herself at him every chance she got? There was something like it in the way Archer looked at me, like I was the most fascinating thing in the room. But I’d never felt quite so much like food under Archer’s gaze. Which was definitely a good thing considering what he ate, but still. It made me feel like freaking Venus on the half-shell, and suddenly I knew what I had to do.

  “I’ve come from the Lady Elizabeth.”

  If I thought he was hungry looking at me, it was nothing compared to the look of the starving man at the mention of Elizabeth’s name. “Is she well? They’ve said she was ill and I’ve worried for her safety.”

  Wow. The guy was head over heels in love with her.

  “She’s fine-ish. Convinced she’s going to die, but that’s probably nothing new.”

  Dudley’s face practically crumpled with distress. That’s what it was, pure distress at the idea that Elizabeth could be anything other than perfectly happy.

  “I would see her if I could. That she’s here in this wretched place has torn my heart from my body, but that she knows even a moment’s fear is more than I can bea
r.”

  Dude. Have a little drama with your angst.

  It was time for these two to get over their bad selves and hook up. So, I came up with what I hoped wouldn’t be crappy plan number three.

  “Can you get out of here?”

  “Not without two guards. They allow me one hour on the ramparts at midnight. The sun has become a distant memory to my tortured eyes.”

  Good God, this guy needed his own Greek chorus.

  “Okay, fine. She’ll come to you. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve figured out when I can make it happen.”

  Dudley looked like the sun had just risen on my face. “You’re an angel.”

  “Or something.” I was getting nervous that no guards had come by, and I definitely didn’t want to be caught in Dudley’s cell. “Where’s Wyatt, and how often do the Yeomen Warders come by here?”

  Dudley’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Say the rumors of an affair aren’t true. You cannot imagine I’d tell you the whereabouts of that scoundrel? I’d rather die than facilitate a meeting between my Lady and the dog who put her at such risk.”

  Wow. The guy turned on an emotional dime, and I blinked when I realized what he was actually saying. “Dude, Elizabeth doesn’t even know Wyatt, much less have a thing for him. The guy’s going to die, and his little brother wants to see him, that’s all.”

  I forgot to speak in sixteenth-century words, but Dudley was seriously annoying with his instant conclusion-jumping. I got a grip on myself and lowered my voice. “Just tell me what I need to know, and I’ll make sure you get to see Elizabeth.”

  Dudley’s eyes did their undressing thing on my face again, but this time I was immune. He took his sweet time, but finally answered the question. “I know not whence you’ve come, but my desire for news of my Lady Elizabeth overrides my fear. Guards leave me to my own devices from late afternoon until my midnight release.” He paused dramatically, and I bit my tongue. “And the Wyatt dog is kenneled down there.” He threw his head in the direction I’d been traveling down the hall. “He whimpered pathetically on his way down the corridor this morning.”

  Right. I suddenly felt bad for Pancho, and wasn’t sure I really wanted to go in search of a guy who had been whimpering this morning. But I squared my shoulders and sucked up a little courage.

  Then I nodded toward the carving Dudley had been doing in the stone wall. “I like your work, by the way. It looks like it’ll hold up well.” Little did he know.

  The compliment seemed to surprise him. “Many thanks.”

  I backed out the door and was just about to close it. “Milady?” Dudley’s voice was nearly a whisper. “I’ve never been more than a childhood friend to her. How can you know she will come?”

  “She remembered the bachelor’s button flowers you used to tease her about, and she called you Robin. She’ll come.”

  The look of longing that crossed his face was too much and I closed his door and turned the key in the lock as silently as I could. The guy was clearly in love with her. I hoped Dudley knew how to reserve that look for just one woman, because every woman should feel adored and revered like that. Especially the future Virgin Queen.

  The moment the door closed my senses were plunged into darkness again. But this time it was different. If I was canine, my hackles would have raised up in an automatic fear response to an unknown threat. But I didn’t have hackles to make me look big and scary. I had a functioning brain and four other senses to help me figure out what the hell was in the dark hall with me.

  Wyatt

  I ran down an instant mental checklist. Eyes? Useless. Ears? I couldn’t hear anything. Not one thing, and it made me ridiculously nervous. The way my heart was pounding with instinctual fear I should have been able to hear someone breathing, or even blinking for that matter. Nothing. Taste? Residual meat pie, and dry mouth. Ick. Smell? The only sense I had a shot with, if I could get past the scent of my own terror. It was clear that whatever was with me in the dark was something ‘other.’ Regular humans didn’t provoke this kind of fight or flight reaction in me – so instinctual I had to fight my own responses to assess what I was facing. It wasn’t Monger though, whatever shared the darkness with me. My guts were curling with regular fear, not the vomitous kind Monger proximity inspired.

  I took a tentative, silent, deep breath, and instantly relief flooded my veins. The very faint, very warm smell of spice tinged the air, and my knees nearly gave way with the suddenness of my certainty.

  Archer.

  “You scared me.” My voice was barely a whisper, more of a breath really, but he heard me. He wrapped his arms around me protectively and breathed into my ear.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He was tense. I heard it in his whispered voice and felt it in the arms that held me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Not here.”

  I turned to face him, still wrapped in his arms. I couldn’t see him through the soupy darkness, but I could sense the tightness running through him. I tried out my sixth sense on him, the instinct that had told me he was something ‘other,’ but he was closed to me. I finally broke the long silence.

  “Help me find Wyatt?”

  “Yes.”

  I let out a breath and then turned to continue down the dark hall. I went past the next door, then tried the one after that. Another empty cell. Archer trailed behind me, not touching, but always there. His presence was comforting in a way I didn’t realize I’d wanted. It was probably one of those things Ringo would bust me on if I ever admitted it out loud.

  Finally, near end of the hall, I hit another easy-turn lock. I opened the door slowly and Archer moved up right behind me. The room was nearly as dark as the hallway had been, but someone was there. I could hear shallow breathing coming from the far corner, and the stale smell of sweat and sickness drifted through the cell.

  “Wyatt?” Archer’s voice was a low rumble, and I could hear the person in the corner shift. “Thomas Wyatt?”

  I felt fear roll out from the corner, and heard a short gasp as he sat up. “It’s him. Wyatt, we’re here in the Tower with your brother, Francis. He wanted to see you.” I made my voice soft and as feminine as I could manage. I had the sense this guy was beyond freaked out.

  A sob caught his voice. “He can’t see me. Not like this.”

  “Do you have a candle?”

  He hesitated. “They’ve taken the light.”

  Damn. I’d left my Maglite tucked behind a table in the pages’ annex. The jeans would be bad enough to explain if I was caught. The flashlight would have been impossible.

  Archer shifted slightly behind me, and then I heard a match scrape against the stone wall. The smell of sulphur bit the air and he produced a candle stub from an inside pocket of his cloak and lit it, using my body to block his actions from Wyatt. Matches hadn’t been invented yet, so hopefully he wasn’t paying attention. Archer held the candle out to me, and I flashed him a grateful smile. His face remained expressionless.

  I turned back toward the corner where Wyatt lay huddled.

  “Oh my God.” I couldn’t keep the horror out of my voice, and Wyatt flinched. The candle flickered with the sudden trembling of my hand. The guy was a total mess.

  It wasn’t just a beating; that would have been cleaner. This was the stuff of Cold War spy novels. There was a web of systematic cuts along every piece of exposed skin I could see. Some of them were angry red and weepy, and others had burn marks crisscrossing the incisions like a sadistic game of tic-tac-toe.

  I moved toward him, but Wyatt shrank from me like the monster under the bed had just come out to play. My hands went up in a gesture of harmlessness, and Archer quietly took the candle from me so I could kneel down next to him.

  “What did they do to you?” I carefully reached forward to pull aside the collar of his tattered shirt. The cuts were deep and seemed to be in a pattern. Wyatt flinched, but let me pull the collar back far enough to see the cuts wrap around to his back. Those weren’t de
licate slices, they were brutal whip marks with torn edges of skin pulled so far apart they wouldn’t heal even if he was going to live long enough to get them properly tended.

  “I’ve betrayed her.” Wyatt’s voice was a whisper of agony that I barely heard, but which snapped Archer’s attention around like lightning.

  “Who? What did you do, Wyatt?”

  He looked up with haunted eyes, and I could see that physical pain wasn’t the only thing going on behind them.

  “Bishop Gardiner has a man …” He took a deep, ragged breath as if he was trying to gather strength. “A man wearing the robes of a bishop with the eyes of the devil, he made me … talk.”

  None of the espionage novels I’d ever read could have prepared me for the horror of real torture.

  “What did he want?”

  “Evidence against the Lady Elizabeth. Of treason.”

  “And he got it?” Archer’s voice had a hard edge. It was weird and didn’t fit with the compassionate, totally protective guy I knew. Wyatt flinched again.

  “I signed where they told me to sign.”

  Archer stepped backwards, drawing the candle light away from where I still hovered near Wyatt. “Did you ever hear a name of the other bishop? The man who did this?”

  Wyatt was silent long enough I wondered if he was still conscious.

  “Gardiner called him Wilder.”

  I had to run to catch up to Archer. He was flying up the spiral stairs to get outside, and I’d barely had time to lock Wyatt’s door behind us before he was gone. The night air was cold and silent, and I could see my breath in the darkness.

  Archer didn’t drop to the barracks roof, but instead kept going along the battlements until we were over a part of the Tower I had only seen in modern times from the tube stop at Tower Hill. Maybe because it was behind the guard barracks it didn’t seem to be guarded as rigorously as the rest of the complex was, and I felt like we were actually alone.