Falling For Henry (11 page)

“Wake up!” the young man was calling and she stared at him blankly. “My God, Katherine, wake up! Are you hurt?”

“I am quite well,” she said, her voice measured and even. “Please help me to my feet, and we shall finish the journey, but a little slower, if you please. I am weary as I have been traveling a long time this day.”

Seated in the saddle again, her mind increased its energy, flitting like a sparrow from one episode to the next until she felt completely worn out. As they rode, the young man kept turning and eyeing her with concern. Who was this guy? He certainly seemed to know her. Conscious of his attention, Kate thought with a jolt of something he had said earlier:
My father the King
.

Who am I?
she asked herself, probing the memories that continued to surprise her as she guided the pony along the path behind the black horse. The clothes here, the formality of the language, even the trappings of the horses were bewildering and yet somehow commonplace. Questions flooded her mind about every detail, asking what it all meant and where exactly she was. Then, even more urgently, she muttered to herself,
And when?

11
William

BRUSHING THE HAIR out of his eyes, William carefully opened the door to the shed and stepped inside. He smiled as he noticed that the bowl he'd filled yesterday was now empty. That was a good sign.

“Good boy!” he said to the cub, and the animal wriggled a little as if it understood that William was pleased. Pouring the jar of bread and milk into the bowl, William prayed the creature would be strong enough to eat this fare, and his prayers were rewarded.

As William rubbed strong-smelling grease onto the wounded front leg, the cub didn't growl but remained very still until the process was finished. William couldn't deduce the ingredients, for the vessel was from the stables and he did not know what the servants had used, but he recognized the scent from a similar concoction his mother had mixed for the lambs. He'd helped her make lip balm … and there were some similarities between it and this mixture, although this was definitely more powerful. Nostalgically, he remembered the bottle containing oil of roses his mother always kept in the shadows of the kitchen shelf. Charlotte's job had been to collect the roses each spring, and he remembered her going out with a little basket and coming in proudly, the task completed.

Therein might be another story for Mary, thought William. The story of Charlotte and the roses. How one day, when their mother was making rose water for gooseberry fool, she asked Charlotte to collect some fresh petals. Instead of gathering the wild roses that grew along the lane, Charlotte, thinking to make her task easier, went into Father's garden and pillaged all the robust blooms she could find. When Father returned from the fields and noticed the barren beds, he'd been very angry, thinking the wind had done it. As Charlotte watched him eat his third helping of dessert, heartily giving into his sweet tooth, she'd started to cry, and then finally confessed the whole story.

“What a great hearty hog I am,” their father had said, “to eat up my very best roses!” Then he and all the rest of them had laughed together until Charlotte had dried her tears. You could always count on Father to turn a dark situation light. William sighed. Was there anything that gave his father laughter now? Or were his days dark and solemn from morn to night?

After giving the wolf cub's fur a good brushing to prevent the fleas from settling in, William sat back and contemplated the weak little animal. It had eaten well, and that was a good thing. It also seemed to trust him, which would simplify its care. How long until the leg was well, William could not say, but the salve would help. Perhaps in a few days, the creature might be well enough to go back to the woods. Except for the problem of its singular state. Wolves, he knew, live in packs, with the senior animals hunting for the younger ones. How would this little thing fare, all on its own?

William put aside his worries of the future. It would do no good to think too far ahead. If the infection in the leg worsened, going back to the woods wouldn't be a problem, for the animal would not be alive to go anywhere. He slapped at a flea that was tickling the hairs on his arm. Blasted pest. Insects did not deserve the space they occupied in nature! I'd rather be tramped by a dozen sheep than left for the fleas to ingest, he thought, and then jumped as the wolf cub's rough tongue rasped against the back of his hand. He lowered his hand a little further. “Enjoy the salt,” he said, and then offered his other hand as well. The cub licked both hands before falling back onto its resting place.

“You'll be all right,” William said, standing up and surveying the shed, then turning to the door. “I'll be back after dark,” he called over his shoulder, feeling the need to communicate something if only through the sound of his voice. Animals had just as much need of reassurance as people did.

Hope coursed through him at the thought of restoring this little animal to health, just as he would restore his father to freedom, if only he could. It was his father who had taught him to respect the natural world, just as his father had shown compassion for all living things, human or not. For Father, who so loved the out of doors, imprisonment would be devastating. Now, William felt new resolve. This afternoon he would speak again to Prince Henry. Perhaps he could finally persuade his friend to bend the ear of the King on the elder Fitzroy's behalf. His father had not been involved in any kind of treachery, of that William was sure. He was, in fact, a loyal follower of the King, and had only the misfortune of being related by marriage to the nephews of Richard III, poor little lads, who had disappeared from the Tower so many years ago. If there was any plot to locate these nephews and return them to the throne, John Fitzroy was certainly unaware of it.

William quickly stepped out of the garden and then, just as quickly, darted back to retrieve his cloak. As he walked down the path toward the castle, he could hear dogs barking in the distance and shivered, brushing the hair from his eyes. It was the sound of a hunt, and he wondered what the target was this time. Some unlucky animal in the wrong place at the wrong time. As perhaps he himself was, here in court. Everything about courtly life still felt foreign, even though he'd already been here some months. “I'd rather be bowled with giant beets,” he said to himself, absently scratching his neck, “than spend another fortnight in Placentia.” But in truth, he had little choice in the matter and he knew it.

His mother was a second cousin to Prince Henry's late mother, Elizabeth of York, and so William's connections to the royal family were clear. Henry's grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, had called him here to be one of the Duke's peers in spite of the senior William's disgrace. It was because of his father's imprisonment that William had wanted to come, determined to find a way to clear his father's name. But it felt so hopeless.

Though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me
, thought William. The words of the psalm didn't have the same power as they did when Charlotte said them, but they were familiar. And then something his mother often said came back to him, the words slow and comforting in the face of what seemed like an insurmountable task.
Things are not always what they seem.
He repeated the words to himself now as a kind of promise, and then stopped to listen. The baying of the dogs had stopped.

12
The royal palace

AS THEY RODE along through the woods, Kate tried not to show the interior battle that was occurring. Contrasting thoughts pulled her this way and that, and uppermost was the idea that she had to be cautious about what she said and did. If she, a stranger, had witnessed anything illegal, this fellow would be treating her differently. Instead, he seemed to know her well and treated her gently. Although she did not know where she was or where they were going, somehow the terrain was familiar, the direction they took stirring up phrases of distant memory: it won't be long now. We're almost home. Home?

What her mind kept settling on was the idea that she had somehow traveled outside of her London time zone and ended up in a different time altogether. A completely different time. But was that possible? Logic whirled her back to details from books she'd read. According to the laws of physics, time travel was indeed possible if one went faster than the speed of light. The speed of light squared, she remembered.

Of course, travel even at the speed of light wasn't possible, unless one considered tachyon theory. She considered what she knew about tachyons, charged particles that could be attracted to points at the end of each universe. If the tachyons were drawn to the holes at each end of the tunnel, there would be opposing currents, and the particles themselves would be drawn back and forth through the tunnel, creating an unusual force field. Which would explain the shimmering greenish light—a kind of radiation. Such a force field could distort matter to the physical property it would need to shift between worlds.

Hysterical laughter bubbled up as she contemplated the prospect of being carried through time. Not my idea of a holiday vacation, she muttered, looking down at the dust that still coated her bruised ankles. It occurred to her that this dust could be collections of spent tachyons, particles that had lost their charge. If she was indeed in a time long past, then tachyon theory was a plausible explanation. But what had created the tunnels in the first place? Something had carved them out, had needed the passages so desperately that digging toward escape had become supernatural. The entrances, she mused, seemed stable in terms of place, but perhaps the times at either end could fluctuate, depending on the particular journey one took. Kate remembered leaning a little to the right just before things went dark. Maybe this was what had taken her beyond yesterday's arrival.

The young man, Henry, turned again to scrutinize her. “Are you quite all right?” he called. “I can see you shivering.”

“Fine,” Kate called. “I am quite well.”
I have to get a grip on myself
, she thought. It would be so easy to lose control. She stared at the scenery. Nothing, and yet everything, was familiar. The parks she knew in London were not at all like this, and yet she felt she somehow knew this place. She was connected here with a history she couldn't explain. She suddenly recalled other times with Henry—his arms around her, his voice soft against her ear.
But maybe it's all just a dream,
she thought desperately
. It has to be!

It occurred to her just as suddenly that maybe the present situation was real, and what she remembered from before was a dream. The accident, her father's death, living with her sister—maybe these were the products of her imagination, and real life was what she was currently experiencing. Her mind ached at this possibility, a chance, here at her fingertips, for escape from all that troubled her.

“There!” called Henry as they passed the original hunting site and Kate turned her head from the sight of the dead deer. Instead, she gazed exhaustedly at the marsh and then at the foliage that concealed the mouth of the tunnel. Every pore of her body felt stretched and sore. “Not long now!” he called, glancing back at her with what she interpreted as a worried look. They moved out of the lush woodlands and through a ravaged area of forest, toward an upward-sloping plane. The ground here was reduced to black stubble and the trees stood dark and thin as wires. It looked like a planned burn, its parameters forming what seemed to be a measured quadrant on one side of a grassy hill. What had caused such destruction? Who would burn down an entire forest?

The view from the top of the hill was stunning. At the end of a long stretch of lawn stood the palace. Kate's skin tingled.
My father the King.
Towers and turrets stretched up into the heavens, red brick walls framing a building more massive than any she had seen in New York or London. Most of the structure rose into a second story, but at the far end she could see a tower five stories tall. They passed through stone gates, around which clustered a ragged-looking crowd, men and women holding out their hands beseechingly to the young man while a few scrawny children played in the dirt.

“You shall have your supper,” her companion called out to them, throwing over a handful of coins over which the children eagerly scuffled. “Bide your time.”

“God bless you, my lord,” said one of the older men. “God bless you and your many sons!”

Why did everyone speak of sons?
thought Kate disjointedly.

A cobbled road led up through orchards of fruit trees and past a pond in which swans, white and black, swam languidly. They passed a stone wall, overgrown with vines, around what looked like a smaller, private garden, and Kate caught a glimpse of another young man as he stepped through the open gate toward them and then ducked back inside as if to prevent his being seen. He was a tall fellow with shaggy, sandy hair. She wondered why he'd disappeared like that and what he had to hide.

After a short while, Henry stopped his horse, dismounted, and then helped Kate down from the pony. He has a broad, handsome face, she thought, his skin flushed and healthy from the sun. For a moment, he was close enough for her to breathe his scent: sage and peppermint, a clean, forest smell. Her knees felt weak but it wasn't because of the ride. She was tempted to lean even closer to him, but then she regained her senses and pulled away, just as two young men ran over to take the horses.

“Give them a good rubdown,” her companion said. “They've had a fine workout today.” As the grooms led the horses toward the stables, Henry contemplated Kate.

“You are keeping your arrival secret?” he asked. “You must have paid your servants well to accompany you to Greenwich in secret.”

“I don't know what you mean,” Kate hedged, stumbling on the stones.