The Herald of Day

by Nancy Northcott

  “This girl doesn’t sound like the sort of tool Wyndon would use,” she murmured when he finished. “Though of course that would make her ideal, from his viewpoint.”

  “Exactly. So I didn’t accord her the use of my given name.”

  Grandmère’s brows rose. Such use was so common among England’s Gifted that they considered it the merest courtesy.

  Frowning, he said, “I don’t think she knows the custom.” He told his grandmother about his talks with their guest on the road. “See if you can win some confidences from her. If she is as she seems to be—and I think she is—dealing with her will be much simpler.”

  They reached the yellow bedchamber. Through the open doorway, he could see Miranda Willoughby perched gingerly on the edge of the bed, her fingers tightly clenched.

  His pulse kicked, and his eyes clung to the smooth curve of her cheek, so different from her disguise. His fingers itched to touch, but that was beyond unwise. He clenched them into a fist.

  When he knocked on the door jamb, she leaped to her feet. She looked relieved to see him, and he had no call to preen over that.

  Grandmère said, “You are our guest, mistress. No need to stand on ceremony.”

  Richard introduced the two women. The girl made a quick dipping movement that might’ve begun a curtsey but stopped it abruptly.

  “You have a beautiful home,” she said.

  He smiled acknowledgment. “It will be warmer once I have the fire going.”

  Striding to the hearth, he realized the yellow damask hangings at the windows and halfway down the pale oak walls and the blue-and-white Delft tiles on the firebox surround were likely finer than anything she had ever known. Yet she had the breeding or the sense not to gush about them.

  “You look done in, my dear,” his grandmother said behind him. “Was the journey rough?”

  “I fear I don’t do well in coaches, milady.”

  “Many people don’t,” Grandmère replied.

  Envisioning fire, Richard waved his hand above the wood in the firebox, letting magic bring his intention to life. A spark caught in the stacked kindling, and he fanned it.

  “Mistress Willoughby,” Grandmère said, “you must want a bath to wash off the road dirt. Come sit by the fire while I send for water. We can become acquainted while we wait for it.”

  “Thank you, milady.”

  His grandmother added, “Richard, you likely want a bath yourself and clean clothes for supper.”

  “Indeed.” Besides, their guest might confide more in his grandmother if it were just the two of them.

  Pondering his guest, Richard started down the stairs an hour later. A young woman alone in the world had to guard herself. A Gifted young woman had to take even more care, lest she fall under the control of someone who would abuse her Gifts.

  Mistress Willoughby could have found someone to keep her in far greater ease if she had shown her true form, yet she had taken the harder path. He had to respect that.

  Travel by coach was uncomfortable at best, and he’d set a punishing pace because of his concern about what her visions might mean. Yet she had never complained. Did her stoic endurance signify backbone?

  Acceptance of a hard lot in life?

  Or determination to see a scheme to its end? He thought—even hoped—not, but niggling doubts remained.

  Grandmère met him at the foot of the stairs. “Our guest fell asleep, wearier than she knew from the journey. She’s an interesting girl and seems well brought up, for all her straitened circumstances.”

  Richard said, “I trust she told you of her family’s deaths?”

  “Yes, poor thing, though I had to pry the details out of her. It’s no wonder she has such a guarded look in her eyes. Her life cannot have been easy.”

  “No, and it left her woefully untrained. She didn’t even know what scrying was until we tried it at an inn on the way here. We tried for quite a while, but she couldn’t manage even a simple image.”

  Grandmère raised her eyebrows. “Truly?”

  “I don’t think she was feigning her inability, though the strain of travel may have left her too weary for the attempt. I promised her magical training before we left Dover.”

  “I’ll help if you wish.”

  “I hoped you would. Unless she’s a good actress, she has excellent perceptions but little training except in glamours and such.” He paused. “I want to trust her, Grandmère, but I’m not yet certain I can.”

  His grandmother nodded her understanding. “Before you go, I must warn you. Frances Vale is a dreadful gossip, but she does glean useful information at times. Wyndon has returned to London. According to Frances, he seemed very pleased about something, said it had to do with old grievances but wouldn’t explain.”

  “No sane man would tell Lady Vale anything he didn’t want all over the city. Wyndon is likely so pleased over the discovery of the princes’ bones at the Tower last summer. His pleasure will pass in time.”

  Richard extended his senses to make certain they were alone. “Yet all these events so close in time strain coincidence. Naturally, I suspect Wyndon. I scried last night while Mistress Willoughby slept and could find no trace of her with him in the recent past.”

  His grandmother looked thoughtful. “She has a sweetness about her that wouldn’t survive any dealing with him. We’re so accustomed to plots and intrigue from our time at court. Perhaps too accustomed. While we need not trust her fully until we know her better, we should give her the benefit of the doubt. Unless we discover a reason not to.”

  “On that, Grandmère, I bow to your judgment.”

  She chuckled. “As well you should, my lad. I think your instinct to treat her as a guest is a good one, but we’ll need to have the dressmaker and the cobbler come in.”

  “I agree. What clothing she has looks well made but old and worn. Since she’s not only our guest but our Gifted kindred, we should remedy that.”

  “I’ll see to it.” Grandmère patted his arm. “At least all of this gave you an excuse for missing the annual White Rose banquet. I’m sure your friends will give you a full report.”

  As he grimaced, she said, “Enjoy your evening. I know you’ll like seeing Cabot and the others.”

  He thanked her and beckoned to Enderby.

  The porter brought Richard’s cloak, then departed with a bow. Richard swung the dark blue velvet garment around his shoulders.

  Grandmère adjusted the set of the collar. Frailty suddenly appeared in the determined lift of her chin, a gesture that dared time to do its worst. “You look very like your father, you know. You could be my Robert come again.”

  “Yes, Grandmère, I know.” She’d lost her son too soon and so, he suspected, doubly cherished her grandson. Richard leaned down to kiss her cheek.

  Enderby opened the door for him. Richard nodded thanks and loped down the courtyard stairs to his waiting coach.

  As the coach pulled out into Bishopsgate Street, his mind drifted to his hazy memories of his father—the sound of laughter, the scent of pipe tobacco, snatches of whistled melody. Only impressions, save for three or four exchanges he could recall.

  Most of the time, his father had been in England, working for the king’s restoration. Such work left little time for a boy too young to help. So Richard had been sent with Grandmère to safety in France.

  His last conversation with his father remained clearest in his mind. On the eve of going to war, Robert Mainwaring spoke solemnly to him. “Son, never forget you are an Englishman, and only the restoration of the true king can bring order and peace to England. Remember, too, that our family owes blood debt to King Richard III and the house of York.”

  Richard had promised. His father had embraced him, kissed Grandmère’s cheek, and departed in a swirl of velvet cloak. He had died a few weeks later in King Charles II’s defense at the useless battle of Worcester.

  The memory burned like a hot coal in Richard’s mind. With it came the old doubts about whether his fat
her’s death had been a natural result of battle or a consequence of obsession and distraction due to the family curse. Grandfather had taken his own life in a fit of madness after years of fruitlessly trying to lift the curse. Grandfather’d had Grandmère’s love and support, while Mother gave Father only bitterness and resentment. Would that make a man snap sooner?

  Richard sighed. He hated the annual gathering of the League of the White Rose because it threw the family curse in his face. But it was a link to his father, who had never missed the dinner if he could be in London for it.

  Descendants of Richard III’s supporters, the league’s members gathered each year on October second, the dead king’s birthday, to honor the man whose motto had been Loyalty binds me. Out of loyalty, they preserved the true story of his life in defiance of the slanderous tale perpetuated by the Tudors and their pet playwright, Shakespeare.

  Richard’s studies had given him a reluctant appreciation for the king whose name he bore, the last of the Yorkist line. If not for Edmund’s damning vow, he might have found some pleasure in the dinner, despite its tedious traditions. At least this year, he could hear about anything important from his friends without having to endure the gathering.

  Cabot and the others would doubtless have much to say. Then perhaps they could help untangle his current puzzle.

  Chapter 7

  “This year’s White Rose banquet wasn’t as tedious as they usually are,” Cabot said. He led Richard and the others into the library of Aysgarth House, the Winfield family’s London home. “We’ve a mystery to solve, and I don’t mean the ill wind and tension in the City.”

  “Then we have two,” Richard said. “I brought one back with me.”

  His favorite chamber here, the library smelled of beeswax candles and leather bindings. The Great Fire had swept through this part of the city, destroying the medieval house, but the family and their servants had managed to save many of the books and paintings.

  A cheery blaze crackling on the hearth banished the autumn chill. Richard turned to wait for Cabot, who was locking the door. With the evening meal finished and no servants likely to disturb them, they could speak freely.

  Cabot’s brother, Jeremy, dropped onto a straight-backed chair by the hearth. “The evening was tedious enough,” he said, grimacing. “If one more man had said, ‘The fact that those bones in the Tower were found where Thomas More said they’d be doesn’t mean they belong to the Princes,’ I might’ve bolted from the room.”

  Thomas More, Henry VIII’s rebellious chancellor, had written a damning biography of Richard III. His account was widely believed though More had been only seven when the king died. Much had been made of the bones under the stairs in the Tower of London’s White Tower as evidence of the boys’ deaths and their uncle’s guilt. Only Richard and his friends—and Wyndon, who doubtless found the whole thing amusing—knew the blame belonged elsewhere.

  Pouring madeira into goblets of Venetian glass marked with delicate tracery, Cabot said, “An aide to the Archbishop of Canterbury bolting from dinner? Undignified, Jeremy. What would the archbishop think?”

  “Since he isn’t a member of the group, I doubt he would ever hear of it.” Accepting the wine Cabot handed him, Jeremy shook his head. “Whenever I come up to London, the archbishop expects me to stay at Lambeth Palace. He then embroils me in some sort of church political strife. Every year, I vow I’m not coming up from Canterbury for this. Yet every year, here I am.”

  “Because you’re loyal,” Richard said quietly, taking the glass Cabot offered. “King Richard valued loyalty, too.”

  And had inspired it in others, as demonstrated by the annual gathering in his honor. While the Tudors reigned, the group had met discreetly, doing so openly only after the Stuart James I succeeded to the throne.

  Jeremy raised his goblet in salute.

  Like Cabot, he stood over six feet tall and had their father’s high cheekbones and aquiline nose and their mother’s wide, generous mouth and intelligent gray gaze. Jeremy, however, was slimmer of build and paler, with hair of darker brown. He spent his days indoors reading scripture and dealing with church politics instead of outdoors rigging sails. His was a quieter but equally imposing presence.

  The fourth member of the party, Christopher “Kit” Grayson, Earl of Havelock, in Northumberland, ran a hand through his dark hair and smiled at Richard. “It’s only natural that everyone would talk of those bones, what with their just having turned up this summer, but the talk grew tiresome.”

  Richard nodded at him. “I’m certain it did. But let’s share our mysteries. What happened at the banquet?”

  Cabot quirked a brow at him. “You first. Tell us about Dover.”

  Possibilities whirling in Richard’s brain made him too restless to sit still. He paced the room while he told them of Miranda Willoughby and her strange visions.

  Standing by the hearth, he concluded, “Add to that, Wyndon was out of London all the latter part of the summer. According to Lady Vale, who may rattle like a coach on a country lane but generally speaks the truth, he returned very pleased with himself over ‘old grievances.’ As far as I know, he has no grievance older than the one against the Mainwarings.”

  “As far as you know.” Jeremy frowned. “What of this maidservant? Do you think she has some connection to him?”

  Her face rose in Richard’s mind, her clear eyes troubled as she stared out at the Channel in indecision. He liked her, he realized.

  At last, he shook his head. “My instincts, and Grandmère’s, say no. I think she may be just what she seems.”

  Or so he hoped.

  Cabot rose to refill his own glass. “Talking of old grievances reminds me of our news and of what Brackenbury said at the White Rose gathering. About his copy of Buck, do you remember?” He glanced at Kit and Jeremy, who nodded.

  Sir George Buck had written his History of King Richard III, the first defense of the late king, during the reign of James I, some one hundred and thirty years after Richard III’s death. Every man in the room owned a copy.

  “He said it didn’t read aright,” Kit recalled.

  Cabot nodded. “It doesn’t. I skimmed over my copy this afternoon to check it. Brackenbury isn’t Gifted, which may explain his inability to spot the difference, but a big part of it’s gone missing.”

  “What do you mean?” Richard asked as his gut tensed.

  “It seems to have all its pages, but all references to the Croyland Chronicle are gone.” Cabot rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I put away the problem to deal with later, but given the boar, stag, and dragon symbols in the vision you describe, it’s doubly worrisome.”

  The Croyland Chronicle, a record of events in England kept by monks at Croyland Abbey, had formed the basis for Buck’s defense of King Richard’s actions in assuming the throne. In the Chronicle, Buck had found and reported the text of the Titulus Regius, the act of Parliament setting forth the reasons why Parliament considered Richard III, and not his brother’s son, the rightful heir to the throne. With Parliament supporting his claim, King Richard had had no reason to murder his nephews.

  Slowly, Kit said, “But the only way to do that, to change all the books, would be by magic. And even then, there must be hundreds of copies out there. Buck’s History has been in print for decades. It would be impossible to change them all, singly or as a group.”

  “Not if you could splice time,” Richard said. A chill spiked into the back of his neck. “If you spliced from now back to a point before Buck found the Chronicle, then destroyed it—”

  “It wouldn’t—couldn’t—be in the text,” a pale-faced Jeremy finished. “I read Buck last year before the banquet. The references were there.”

  “No one at the gathering commented specifically on the difference in Buck’s book,” Cabot noted. “If you’re right and someone tampered with the Chronicle magically, perhaps only the Gifted can remember what things were before.”

  “Mistress Willoughby dreamed of a book’s pages
changing before her eyes,” Richard said, his concern deepening. “And now this.” Memory stirred, and he added, “She also saw a sampler that suddenly appeared on a wall, stitched by the wife of a man who’d never wed.”

  Kit frowned. “You went to Pendragon to study splicing last summer, Richard. I remember you said you didn’t find any clues to lifting the family curse. Did you learn anything that could explain how all this could happen?”

  Pendragon manor, deep in the Cumberland hills, was the secret stronghold and homestead of England’s Gifted. The manor and its library were open to any of them who cared to visit.

  “I found references to splicing across time,” Richard replied, “as well as across distance. One scroll said an event that touches one time as well as another can weaken the barriers between the two and help create a splice.”

  “And the boys’ bones were found this past July, tying 1674 to 1483, the year they died, and linking all the years they lay buried,” Jeremy said. “I don’t like the coincidence.”

  “If what we suspect is true,” Richard said, “someone out there is dangerous. If you can go back in time, why not change the source of whatever you dislike?”

  If he could travel back in time, he could undo the murders of Richard III’s nephews. Prevent the family curse.

  But that would violate natural law. Surely there would be consequences—such as the recent eerie wind, perhaps? Or something worse?

  Cabot said, “Mere dislike doesn’t seem reason enough to try something that must involve considerable risk. The princes, their bones, and King Richard’s reputation would be motives for some of us. Personal advantage is an understandable desire. But where’s the benefit in changing the text of a comparatively obscure book?”

  “Perhaps more to the point,” Kit added, “who benefits?”