by Renee Duke
Dickon’s escort, the Archbishop of Canterbury, smiled as he watched the brothers’ reunion. Then he made another bow and withdrew, almost colliding with Otes, who was coming in with a tray of ale, some sweetmeats, and a bowl of strawberries.
“Where is our uncle of Gloucester?” Ned asked Dickon as they all sat down.
“He went off to meet someone Uncle Henry wanted him to talk to. He will be along shortly.” He took a strawberry from the bowl. “These are delicious. Uncle Richard said you might have some here for me.”
Ned nodded. “They come from the gardens of Ely Palace. Dr. Morton gave them to him before all that trouble at the council meeting the other day.”
“Was that when he was arrested for conspiring against our uncle?”
“Several people were arrested. But only Lord Hastings received a death sentence. Dr. Morton was, like Lord Stanley and two others, merely taken into custody. I am surprised you heard of such doings while confined to Sanctuary.”
“Our mother has ways of obtaining information.” Dickon took another strawberry and then pushed the bowl toward the others, urging them to take some.
Paige and Jack did so, but Dane shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t. I’m allergic to strawberries. I get a rash if I touch them and have trouble breathing if I eat them.”
“How disagreeable,” Dickon sympathized. “I have not been well myself of late, but my malady doubtless came from being cooped up in Sanctuary. I felt better as soon as I was on my way here. Did you know that eight boats came to fetch me? There was a crowd of Londoners down by the river when I came out. Many called out blessings to me and said I was the image of our father.”
When they had finished eating, the princes took them on a tour of the Tower. It was a formidable fortress. Had they not materialized in the royal apartments, Dane was sure they would never have gained access to the princes. The deep, water-filled moat posed much more of an obstacle to would-be visitors than the drained, grass covered one of their time. The drawbridge was down during the day, but there was still a series of walls and portcullis-protected gateways beyond it. These ensured that only those with actual business in the Tower could get beyond the military barracks and servants’ quarters in the Outer Ward.
Even so, both the Outer and Inner Wards were full of people. Some were busy making clothes and other ceremonial trappings for Ned’s coronation and were darting in and out of the Wardrobe Tower with harassed expressions. Those not thus occupied were hard at work in the gardens, kitchens, smithy, and other areas. A variety of weapons were made and stored at the Tower of London, and the Royal Mint operated from there. Walking around, Dane wondered how many members of the Tower community had lived there for generations, attending its church, visiting its shops, and socializing in its ale-houses in much the same way as they would have in any English village of the time.
There was even a small menagerie down by the Tower’s riverfront, but the animals in it were not the sculptured replicas he had seen on display in modern times. These ones were real.
“Here be what I like best,” said Dickon, pointing to a man wheeling a cart toward the cages. “The keeper is about to feed the lions their daily ration.”
The lions had seen the man too. They began to roar. When he stopped the cart to throw them chunks of meat, the noise became almost deafening. As the children watched, the big cats fell upon their meal, their roars changing to contented growls.
“What is this?” said a voice behind them. “’Twas my understanding that my royal nephew wanted his brother of York here because he lacked youthful companions.”
Turning, they saw Duke Richard.
“These three have come to London for Ned’s coronation, uncle,” said Dickon. “They are related to Edward Wolverton, an honest merchant and good friend of our late father.”
“Wolverton, you say?” said Duke Richard, looking at them with keener interest. “Hmm. I believe Master Wolverton has a home somewhere near Windsor.”
“Aye, that is so. Dickon and I became acquainted with them during our stay there,” said Ned. “They have since visited with us on several occasions.”
“Have they indeed?” Duke Richard’s gaze rested on Dane for a moment. Fingering the medallion admiringly, he said, “Ah, yes. I now recall seeing this boy amongst your entourage at Stony Stratford. They get about, these young Wolvertons. Mayhap it is a family trait.”
“Are you acquainted with any of our kinsmen, Lord Gloucester?” Dane asked.
“I knew one. Long ago. She was a comely maid.”
He seemed quite interested in their Wolverton relatives. Dickon prudently led the conversation away from the topic by asking his uncle if he had concluded his business with the person he had gone to meet.
“Not entirely. Bishop Stillington had news I found disquieting. I must make further inquiries and return to him anon. I merely came to see if you were settling in well.”
“He is,” said Ned. “I am indebted to you for persuading our royal mother to let him join me.”
“Canterbury and the other churchmen did most of the persuading,” said Duke Richard. “There was naught to warrant his staying in Sanctuary, and ’twill be good for you to have a play fellow. A king has many duties a lad might find tedious. The company of young Dickon here will divert you from them. Your Uncle George and I had some merry times as children.” Ned’s face clouded at this. “Aye, I know. He was executed for treason, and you were taught to scorn him. But he was a good brother to me when we were small and alone in foreign lands.” He smiled. “Bullying me and leading me into trouble were his prerogatives. He allowed no other to do so.”
“Ned never bullies me, and ’tis usually me who leads him into trouble,” Dickon avowed.
“So I have heard.”
They talked a while longer. Then Duke Richard took his formal leave of Ned and went to join Duke Henry, who had been waiting for him in a boat down at the Water Gate.
“I do not like our uncle of Buckingham,” said Ned, scowling. “Our uncle of Gloucester listens overmuch to him concerning state affairs. And since he has spent as little, if not less, time at Court than Uncle Richard has, I do not know how he can have so vast a knowledge of them. Though I dare say he has always kept spies here. His hatred of our Woodville relatives is well known. He has never forgiven our royal mother for marrying him to one of her sisters when he was a child under her wardship. ’Tis little wonder she keeps to Sanctuary while he rides so high in Uncle Richard’s favour.”
Just then a servant came up with a message that the Keeper of the Royal Wardrobe wanted Ned to try on one of the new garments he had made.
“I suppose I must,” said Ned. Dismissing the servant with a wave, he turned to Dane and said, “’Tis likely Master Curteys will also want to fit Dickon for some robes. We had best go to him. You will stay to see my coronation though, won’t you? ’Tis not far off, and I can have comfortable quarters found for you in London.”
Dane exchanged looks with Paige and Jack. None of them liked the idea of waiting for a coronation that was not going to happen. After an awkward pause, they declined the invitation.
“But you must stay,” said Dickon. “If you go back to your own time now your medallion might not bring you back here until after the coronation. You don’t want to chance missing it, do you?”
“We…we won’t miss it,” said Dane.
“Are you certain?” said Ned, looking at him intently.
“Yes,” said Dane, looking away.
Chapter Thirteen
As soon as the princes had gone back into the Tower, the trio went behind some barrels piled farther along the wharf and returned to their own time. Materializing back in the royal apartments, they startled a middle-aged American couple that had just entered the room.
The two stared at them in fascinated horror.
“Sam, those kids came out of nowhere. Are they…are they?” the woman faltered.
“Ghosts,” her husband confirmed. “They gotta be ghosts, Mab
el. This place is supposed to be crawling with ghosts.”
Taking this as a cue, Jack took a step toward them, arms outstretched.
The woman named Mabel gave a shriek. A second later, she and Sam were pounding toward an exit.
“What did you do that for?” said Paige, rounding on him angrily.
“I thought promoting the ghost theory would put them off asking how we really happened to appear so suddenly,” Jack said defensively.
Paige groaned. “How can someone as smart as you have next to nothing in the way of common sense? What if we run into them again in some other part of the Tower? We can’t stay in here until our parents are ready to leave. As far as they’re concerned, we just got here. They’ll expect to see us out there exploring the place.”
“I never thought of that.” Jack looked crestfallen. “But we know what those people look like. We’ll just steer clear of them.”
But just as they got to the exit, they spied Sam and Mabel coming toward them in the company of a skeptical looking yeoman warder.
“Quick, back inside,” cried Paige, giving both the boys a shove.
A far chamber served as a temporary haven while the warder walked around the room in which the pair claimed to have seen ghosts. Finding none present, he spoke soothingly to Sam and Mabel and suggested they continue their tour in another section of the Tower.
“You don’t believe we saw ghosts in here, do you?” Sam spoke accusingly.
“It’s late in the day, sir. The light can play funny tricks.”
“The Tower of London does have ghosts though, doesn’t it?” Mabel insisted.
“There are those who claim to have observed the spirits of certain famous personages within these ancient walls, Madam, but no one has ever reported seeing the three young spectres you described.”
“Then we must be the first people they’ve shown themselves to,” said Mabel, excitedly. “Why do you think they chose us?”
“I could not say, Madam.”
“Maybe we’ve got some kind of aura around us that invites contact from the spirit world. Come on, Sam. Let’s go see if we can find some somewhere else.”
“Okay. Where do you think we should start, Mr. Warder?”
The warder sighed. “The Bloody Tower might have possibilities, sir. Once known as the Garden Tower, the grisly fates of some of its inhabitants eventually caused it to acquire the more macabre sobriquet.”
“Great. We’ll go there, then.”
“I thought we scared them out of their wits,” Paige said after the warder had followed Sam and Mabel out. “Now they’re going ghost hunting.”
“Works for us,” said Dane. “Now that we know where they’ll be, we can slip into another part of the Tower without them seeing us.”
“Where are the crown jewels?” Paige asked. “We might as well see those since we’re here.”
“Waterloo Barracks, up across from the White Tower,” said Jack. “We should be all right in there.”
The queue to get into the Jewel House was surprisingly short. Its travelator, a moving walkway designed to prevent log jams, took them along quite slowly, but not slowly enough to use up as much time as they would have liked, so they went across to the White Tower to seek refuge there.
Halfway up the stairs was a plaque commemorating the discovery of two sets of children’s bones near that very spot in 1674. Bones that had been declared to be those of the missing princes, Edward the Fifth and Richard, Duke of York, and laid to rest in Westminster Abbey.
Dane stopped to gaze at it.
“Keep going,” said Paige, prodding him. “We’ve met them in the flesh. Don’t worry about some old bones. I read about that discovery. People just assumed they were theirs. There’s no real proof.”
The Tower’s oldest structure also housed an impressive collection of medieval weapons and armour. Looking at these took longer than viewing the jewels, but when they came out of the White Tower, Sam and Mabel were still around. This time it was Jack who spotted them, by the Beauchamp Tower on Tower Green.
“I’ve had it with this,” Dane said as they ran round past the Fusilier’s Museum and sped down to the royal apartments again. “Let’s go back to the princes for a while. I feel kind of bad about running out on them the way we did. I just didn’t know what to say to them.”
“Me neither,” said Paige, “but if we go again now, it’d make the third time today and be our fifth visit—which could also be our last visit. That five times thing in the rhyme could mean the number of times we can connect to a specific Keeper Piece.”
“I don’t think so,” Jack ventured. “I think the five times refers to how many different time periods we can visit, not how often we go to a specific one. And I want to go back to the princes again today.”
“So do I.” Dane came to a stop beside a hedge near a gift shop in the Inner Ward. “This is where they disappeared from. We don’t know for how long, in their time, they’re going to be here. And the gaps of time between visits are getting shorter, just like Jack thought they would.” He turned to his cousin. “You said you had a theory about that. What was it?”
“It’s based on how the verse on the box was worded,” Jack replied. “Roswold Wolverton must have found out something about how the medallion works. He added the verse to give future users a hint about its power and the reason it was made.”
“Why just a hint?” said Paige. “Why didn’t he come right out and say it?”
“That wouldn’t have been in keeping with his times. Medieval people loved riddles. You saw that at the Midsummer Eve festivities.”
“Okay, so it’s a riddle,” Paige said in exasperation. “I don’t remember there being any reference to anything that would explain why the time gap was so much shorter the last time we went to the princes.”
In answer, Jack recited the whole of the verse.
“’Tis for youth to call its own,
By speaking words in proper tone.
And up to five times be guided,
To those whose fate be not decided.
For divers lives must come to blend,
Ere the roses’ peregrinations end.”
He paused. “The medallion was made to help Varteni, but the words ‘those whose fate be not decided’ imply that, in seeking her, it can take its users to other kids who might be in trouble. And the words ‘be guided’ could mean that it decides who we meet up with, and arranges the time jumps to work in accordance to its purpose.”
“Which is?”
“To get us to help, not only Varteni, but whoever else it happens to take us to,” said Dane, picking up Jack’s train of thought. “In fact, it might be that the only way to help Varteni is to help other kids too.”
“How can we help the princes?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t actually tried, have we? We’ve been too busy enjoying ourselves and leaving when things got uncomfortable.”
For a moment, the three of them just looked at one another. Finally Paige said, “Well, okay, maybe we haven’t been doing anything to help them. But what does the medallion expect us to do? You saw what this place was like in the fifteenth century. There were guards everywhere. We can’t exactly overpower them.”
“Why not?” Jack wanted to know. “You and Dane take karate, don’t you?”
“Karate’s about defence, not attack. And the best defence is to not get into a fight in the first place. A blue belt and an orange belt wouldn’t make a very effective assault team anyway. We’re just kids. We’re not big enough to do trained soldiers any damage.”
“Sensei says size doesn’t always matter,” said Dane.
“Sensei’s never tried to take down a guy wearing medieval armour.”
“None of the guards we saw were wearing full armour,” Jack reminded her.
“Yeah? Well, I’m still not going up against one.”
They sat looking at one another again.
“Maybe we could just sneak Ned and Dickon out of here,” D
ane suggested.
“Past all the people who lived in this place back then? We’d wind up in a dungeon for sure.”
“So what? We can just say the connecting rhyme and come home again.”
“That could prove difficult if we happen to be chained to opposite walls.”
“Well, I still think we should go back.”
“So do I,” said Jack. “I’m not sure we’ll be able to do anything, but we should at least try.”
“Okay, okay,” said Paige, outvoted. “Maybe we’ll come up with some kind of plan once we’re there.”
Two Tower ravens had come to perch on a nearby railing while they were talking. Neither they nor the railing were in evidence when the children arrived in the fifteenth century. It appeared to be mid-morning, and the Tower was as busy as it had been before. A large number of sacks and crates were being moved into a nearby storehouse. A stack of them had shielded their arrival. Stepping out from behind the crates, they were hailed by a soldier.
“Who are you?” the soldier asked sharply, his weapon held out in challenge.
“Dane Marchand…I mean Dane Wolverton,” Dane answered nervously.
“Wolverton? Aye, you are permitted access to the boys. They were out in the gardens earlier but have now been taken back to their quarters. Come with me.”
He led them to the White Tower.
“This wasn’t where Ned and Dickon were staying before,” whispered Jack, mounting the stairs.
“And what’s with ‘the boys’?” Paige demanded, also in a whisper. “What happened to ‘the King’s Grace’ and ‘His Grace, the Duke of York’ and all those other fancy titles?”
Two men were outside the room that the soldier took them to. They appeared to be servants rather than guards, and one of them smiled as he opened the door. Inside the room, Dickon was practicing dance steps. As they entered, he was urging Ned to join him, but the older boy was sitting in a corner with his chin in his hands and did not seem to hear him. Dane was shocked by Ned’s appearance. When they had last seen the princes, they had both been neat and well dressed. Dickon still was, but Ned’s hair was unkempt, his clothes dishevelled. And the Keeper Ring he had been wearing during all their other visits was now worn by Dickon.
