The Prince of Lies: Night's Masque - Book 3 (37 page)

“The moon is scarce past new,” she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement now. “There can be no better time.”

He took her hand, and she did not resist. “Then I shall be waiting for you outside the gate, from midnight until an hour before dawn.”

She leant forward a little, and to his surprise he realised she was inviting a kiss. He obliged, intending it to be only the briefest of caresses, but the touch of her lips on his shook him to the core. Before he knew it he had taken her in his arms and was kissing her jaw, her throat, weeping his regrets into her unbound hair.

“Ssh, my love,” he heard her murmur, but that only made it worse.

With an effort he gathered the shreds of his dignity and pulled one hand free to wipe his eyes. When he looked up, her eyes were shining too. He opened his mouth to apologise for his past heartlessness, but she reached up and put a finger to his lips.

“What need we of words?” she whispered, and kissed him again.

By the time the guard knocked politely on the door half an hour later their reconciliation was complete, and they went their separate ways with lightened hearts and many a secret smile.

Kit spent a very dull morning and an even duller afternoon alone in his bedchamber, Doctor Renardi having forbidden him to attend lessons in case he overtaxed his mind too soon after his seizure. At first Kit had been delighted, but then the doctor also forbade reading or physical exertion, so he had nothing to do except stare out of the window. For a while he amused himself by watching the sentries patrolling the battlements and trying to count the ravens that flew around the little towers of the great keep, but even that became boring after a while.

A search of the room produced a couple of worn pennies with which to play shove-groat on the top of one of the chests, though it wasn’t really smooth enough, and then he lost one of the coins when it skidded off and rolled into a crack in the floorboards, so that was the end of that. After what felt like hours, Master Weston sent Sidney to call him to supper, and Kit was never so glad to see the other boys in his life, even de Vere.

When supper was over, Doctor Renardi made more of his sleeping draught and sent both the younger boys to bed. To Kit’s surprise the doctor brought two cups to their chamber.

“You both need your sleep,” he said, “and you, Master Sidney, will disturb Master Catlyn less if you sleep soundly.”

Sidney folded his arms. “Take it away. You’re trying to poison us, like you did Prince Edward.”

Kit looked doubtfully at the cups, then at Doctor Renardi. “It was all right last night.”

“It is not poison, Master Sidney. See?” The doctor took a sip from one of the cups. “Now drink up.”

“What’s in it?” Sidney wrinkled his nose as he took the one that Renardi had drunk from.

“Chamomile and a little valerian.”

“It’s really not horrid.” Kit took a gulp of the warm, sweet liquid. “There’s honey too.”

The doctor waited until they had both emptied their cups, then left them to undress.

“I hope I’m allowed to do lessons tomorrow,” Kit said, climbing into bed.

“I wish I could swap places with you. I hate Latin.”

“
Perodi
linguam Latinam
,” Kit translated.

Sidney giggled. “You see? You’re much better at it than me.”

The bed-ropes creaked as Sidney got in and the two boys lay in silence, their usual squabbles over cold feet and farts forgotten. Kit pulled the covers up to his chin and prayed for the sleeping draught to work quickly. Tomorrow couldn’t be any worse than today.

“I want to help,” Sandy said, barring Mal’s way out of the kitchen.

It was a childish gesture, one that took Mal back to old arguments won – and lost. He laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder and looked into his dark eyes, wondering if there was anything really left of Sandy in there, or if Erishen had taken over entirely.

“And you can. By going to Deptford. If there’s a single skrayling vessel left that can carry us out of England, you are the best person to approach her captain.”

Sandy nodded slowly, as if digesting this.
You made me wait for this
, Mal could not help but think.
Now it’s your turn
.

“So,” he said aloud, “can I get on with my own business?”

Without waiting for a reply he gently pushed his brother aside and headed up the stairs. A moment later footsteps followed him.

“But I could transport Kit out of the Tower in the blink of an eye,” Sandy said as he caught Mal up in the parlour. “You wouldn’t need to go to all this trouble.”

“Could you? With our enemies right there?”

Sandy opened his mouth to speak, but Mal held up a hand to silence him.

“Don’t be a fool, Sandy. If anything went wrong, I could lose you as well as Coby and Kit.”

His brother sagged, defeated. Mal closed the space between them, embraced him.

“It won’t be long now,” he murmured. “Just a few more hours, and we’ll all be free.”

That night Coby went to bed as usual with the other ladies, but just before midnight she rose and silently dressed in her boy’s attire that Mal had thoughtfully included in the bundle of clothing. Her lock-pick roll went into one pocket, a purse of coins and jewellery in the other, and she tucked a sheathed dagger into the back of her belt, just in case. Last of all she fastened a spirit-guard around her throat, since there was a chance she might have to face Prince Henry or even Olivia tonight.

With her shoes in her left hand she padded down the stairs to the dining room in her stockinged feet. Now came the hardest part. In order to get to the walkway she had seen, she would have to go through the Queen’s bedchamber. She tiptoed through the small parlour and up the steps, and pressed her ear against the door. To her relief she heard snoring. Hardly daring to breathe, she eased the latch down and opened the door just wide enough to slip through.

The Queen’s bedchamber was pitch dark, the air thick with the smell of a used chamberpot. Coby sidled along the wall furthest from the bed, groping for the door that she knew was there. At last her fingers met wood studded with nail heads.

The bed creaked.

“…and don’t do that again…”

Coby froze, heart pounding fit to burst out of her chest.

The voice died away into a mumble. Coby offered up silent thanks; it was only one of the ladies-in-waiting talking in her sleep. She opened the second door as quietly as the first and closed it behind her, then groped her way up the stairwell to the floor above. The scuff of boots on the outer wall-walk betrayed the guards’ patrols, but she had become accustomed to their patterns after more than a week in the Tower. Far fewer guards patrolled the inner ward. After all, no one expected an attack from within.

The door to the walkway leading into the Wakefield Tower was locked but not bolted, for which she was vastly grateful. It suggested that the door at the other end might be similarly secured; if it were bolted from within, she would have to rethink her route. She knelt and unrolled her tools, and soon had the door open.

Out in the cool night air, her courage almost failed her. There was so far to go yet, and she still did not know if she could even get them out of the fortress. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, then scuttled across the short walkway, hunched down low enough not to be easily spotted by a sentry.

Mal looked around the room, checking he hadn’t forgotten something. He wore his blades and carried a modest sum of money in his purse, but that was all; he did not want to be laden down for this venture. All his spare clothes and other belongings had been packed and sent to Deptford with Sandy and Gabriel.

“Are you sure you won’t come with us?” he said to Ned.

His friend shook his head. “We belong in London, Gabe and me. Anyway, with you lot gone for good, I doubt the guisers will care about us.”

“You know I’d stay, if it weren’t for Kit and Coby. ’Tis not cowardice that drives me away.”

“I know.” Ned clapped him on the shoulder, and gave him a sympathetic look. “I’d do the same for Gabe, if it came to it.”

They made their way down to the courtyard, and Mal cautiously opened the wicket gate. The curfew bell had long since rung and the night was as black as he could wish, not even a glimmer of moonlight visible in the narrow streets. Here and there a lantern burned outside a house, enough to light their way but casting plenty of shadows too.

Mal stepped out into the street, ears alert for any sound of a watchman or a lurking footpad. This side of midnight there were still a few late revellers about, too emboldened by drink to care about the watch and too blinded by it to notice a predator in an alley-mouth until it was too late. Armed and sober men made an unattractive target in comparison, but Mal wanted no trouble tonight.

Slipping from shadow to shadow they made their way down Long Southwark and across Saint Olave’s Street to a riverside lane. Dozens of wherries bobbed against the jetty, waiting for their owners to return at dawn. On the far bank, the Tower was lit up like a pleasure garden, torches burning at intervals along the wall-walks and around the tops of the towers. Mal’s heart sank. It was a goodly distance from Saint Thomas’s Tower to the easternmost corner of the castle; could Coby get that far without being caught?

“Too late to back out now,” Ned whispered, catching his mood. “Help me untie one of these, will you?”

A few minutes later they were sliding across the murky waters of the Thames, with Mal at the oars and Ned crouched in the bows, steering them towards the darkness at the downriver end of the Tower. Mal wondered how the ferrymen managed to cross the river so easily when they couldn’t see where they were going.

“Slow down!” Ned hissed. “I can hear another boat.”

Mal glanced back over his shoulder. The waters all along the Tower quayside glittered gold in the torchlight, but in one spot the slow rhythm of the current was disturbed by a dark shape not much bigger than their own boat. As Mal watched, it disappeared into the tunnel under the wharf that led to Traitor’s Gate.

“We should follow them,” Ned said. “If the water gate’s open, we can get right inside the castle, can’t we?”

“No. The last thing we need is to be caught in a confined space, and anyway we could miss Coby and Kit altogether.” He bent to the oars again. “We stick to the plan.”

Kit woke in the night, his mouth dry as paper and his bladder aching. Perhaps the sleeping draught hadn’t been as strong this time, or perhaps he was getting used to it already. Sidney was still snoring at his side, his arm flung out across the blankets. Kit thought of poor Edward, dying in his bed only a few yards from here. Perhaps he wouldn’t get up and use the chamberpot just yet. It was easy enough to scoff at ghosts in the daytime, but at night when footsteps echoed and shadows shifted in the moonlight … It couldn’t be long until dawn, surely?

The ache in his bladder got worse, and he was just about to chance getting out of bed when he heard the door of their chamber creak. Was that Master Weston coming to wake them for breakfast, or the prince’s ghost? He waited, heart pounding so loud he wondered that it didn’t wake Sidney. The whisper of shoeleather on stone came nearer and nearer the bed. He wriggled upright, hardly daring to breathe. Should he wake Sidney? No, his companion would only tease him about it if it turned out to be nothing more than a servant.

The footsteps halted close to the bed. Light moved beyond the curtains, but not on the same side as the footsteps. There were two of them? Kit backed against the headboard, and next to him Sidney stirred.

“You awake, Catlyn?” the other boy mumbled.

At that moment the curtains were wrenched aside. Kit had a momentary glimpse of an unfamiliar man’s face, yellow and black in the candlelight, then something was pulled down over his head, like Uncle Sandy’s hat in the game of Hoodman Blind. A drawstring tightened about his throat and rough hands seized him. Kit kicked and tried to shout for help, but drawing breath only sucked the sacking dust into his mouth and made him choke. In his panic his full bladder gave way.

“Gah! Little bastard pissed all over me!”

“Less wriggling, little master,” a second voice growled, “unless you want to feel the back of my hand.”

Kit lay still, just as he was told, whilst they bound his wrists and ankles and wrapped him in something that felt like a blanket. One of the men hoisted him up, threw him over his shoulder and carried him out of the portcullis chamber, past the garderobe to the spiral stairs. At first Kit thought – hoped – they were going to the upper chamber, and that this was nothing worse than some cruel new jest of Prince Henry’s, but the man went down and down, through a small room and down again into a great echoing space like a cellar. Finally they were out into the cool night air and the man halted as if waiting for something.

Kit twisted in the man’s arms, determined to get free, but that only earned him a sharp slap around the head. Tears pricked his eyes. If only Henry had not taken his sword from him; he could have kept it by his bed and killed the man the moment he attacked.

A creak and a splashing sound, then Kit was carried rapidly downwards. The world lurched, and Kit cried out as he was thrown through the air, landing with a painful thud in what felt like the arms of another man.

“Just the two of them?” That was the man now holding him.

“For now,” said another man, one Kit had not heard before. “Quick, before anyone sees the water gate is open.”

Kit was lowered onto a hard surface that moved under him. After a moment he realised he was in a boat. Two of them, the man had said. Then at least he was not alone.

CHAPTER XXVI

Coby inched around the roof of the Bloody Tower just inside the battlements, praying she could not be heard in the room below. There must be a way into the tower here somewhere, otherwise why build the walkway across to the inner ward in the first place? At last she reached the far side and the low turret that topped the stairwell. Her hands were shaking so much she could scarcely hold the lock-picks, never mind fit them into the lock. Putting down the tool-roll for a moment she laced her fingers together and knelt in silent prayer. When the pounding of her heart had dimmed a little, she tried the latch, just in case – and the door swung open. Part of her wanted to believe it was Providence, but at the same time she feared there must be something badly wrong if the prince’s lodgings were so ill-defended.