The boy slipped away under the water.
She came awake with a scream, sitting bolt upright in bed. Confused momentarily by her surroundings and the horrible dream, moonlight and the wispy remnants of storm clouds out the bed-room window brought her to her senses and the present moment.
I am at Barkley Manor,
she told herself.
Antony and Edward
are dead, England is at war with itself, and my dearest friend in the
world hates me.
Good cause for a nightmare.
There was no chance for sleep now, so Nell gathered a small coverlet round her shoulders, lit her bedside lamp, and left the room. She was curious about her employer’s properties, and now with the probability of Henry Tudor supplanting Richard as king, Margaret Beaufort would become much more than merely a wealthy woman. She would be queen mother and, more importantly, Bessie’s mother-in-law. Nell wondered, as she padded quietly down the dark stairway to the first floor, whether her friend would ever forgive her for the part she had played in Margaret and Henry’s plan. She’d only been the messenger, but that had been enough for Bessie to feel utterly betrayed. Of course it was more than that, thought Nell. She had dared to believe and say aloud that Bessie’s beloved Richard could be a monster. Perhaps a true friend would never have entertained the thought. It was odd and unnerving wandering round a dark, unattended manor. Nell’s candle flickered in the drafty corridors, and its light illuminated but a small area before her. She held the taper high to examine an old portrait, it inscription proclaiming the man as John of Gaunt, fourth and youngest son of King Edward the Third, He was ancestor of both the York and Lancaster lines, and therefore the progenitor of all the familial infighting that, nearly a hundred years after his death, was still creating havoc and mayhem in England.
Farther down was a portrait of Catherine Swynford, Gaunt’s mistress and later his wife. Unlike Elizabeth Woodville, who had insisted on marriage before bedding, Catherine had birthed two bastard children by him, legitimized when she’d become his wife. Margaret Beaufort was a grandchild of that union.
A third portrait told of Henry Tudor’s paternal lineage, just as flawed and just as eminent as his mother’s. Owen Tudor, whose long, severe face stared out from the picture, had been a wardrobe clerk to the triumphant victor of Agincourt, King Henry the Fifth. When the king had died, his widow, Queen Katherine, had taken the rather lowly Welsh servant into her bed and produced three bastard children—one of them Henry Tudor’s father—all of whom were made legal by the good graces of the next Lancastrian king.
Suddenly Nell found herself at the carven door so like the one leading to Lady Margaret’s Woking offices. Impulsively she reached out and tried the door handle, fully expecting it to be locked. The door opened. Nell shut it quickly, realizing that she was shamelessly snooping in the home of her employer and, perhaps, the mother of the future king. But curiosity quickly overtook good sense, and with a final look behind her, Nell slipped through the doorway.
She was quite unprepared for what she discovered. Here was an almost exact replica of Margaret Beaufort’s warren of offices at Woking Manor. Nell stepped into the hub where Lady Margaret’s desk sat facing in precisely the same direction as its counterpart at Woking. Down a short hall to the left she discovered the cartography room with its baskets of rolled maps, and the table map of England and the continent, with its military pieces all neatly set to one side. In other rooms farther down the hall Nell’s lamplight revealed the fully stocked armory, and the treasury—
though the shelves and chests were here empty. Lady Margaret was too sensible to allow her fortune to be too far from her person at any time. Nell stood in the scribe’s chamber staring at its two high desks and stools and the long, broad table where the second correspondence secretary might lay out the incoming and outgoing documents.
It was eerie to see, by a single candle’s glow, the twin offices in which, one day when Margaret’s yearly progress brought her to Barkley, Nell would likely find herself working. And a stranger thought still:
Did Lady Margaret keep such a warren of offices—each
the same as the next—in every one of her residences?
The squeaking of a door was so unexpected it nearly unhinged Nell. She made to blow out the candle, but thought quickly that the sulfur smoke would give her presence away.
Licking her fingers, she extinguished the flame quickly between them and hid herself behind the open scribe’s-chamber door and peered out through the crack in the hinged side.
Across the hall a long, heavy tapestry was pulled back and through the faintly illuminated doorway behind it emerged the cook. The woman, in her nightdress, carried a tray in one hand and a lantern in the other, and even in the dim light Nell could see she wore a scowl deeper than she had in the servants’ kitchen that evening. Even alone, she was muttering angrily to herself. Blessedly unaware of Nell’s presence so close by, the cook proceeded down the short hall, past Lady Margaret’s desk, and out the carven door. Nell sagged with relief, then realized she was standing in pitch blackness with no way to relight her candle. Using the scribe’s door to guide her, she moved out into the hallway, then remembered the glimpse of faint light she’d seen behind the cook as she’d emerged from the doorway and tapestry hiding it.
Blind, as if her head were encased in black velvet, Nell managed to grope her way down and across the hall to where she believed the tapestry hung. Her hand struck a small wooden plaque hung on the wall, and before she knew what had happened, it had clattered noisily to the floor.
Nell froze, knowing the cook was still close enough to have heard. She felt her way into the cartography room and slipped inside just as the carven door opened again and the cook stuck her head through.
Please do not come back in,
Nell prayed. But the woman entered and stood by Lady Margaret’s desk, holding up the lantern and peering round her. Too lazy or uninterested to investigate further, the grumbling woman, to Nell’s extreme relief, turned and exited.
This time Nell waited, stock-still in the dark, till the cook had had sufficient time to return to the kitchen. Again groping, but much more carefully this time, Nell found the fallen plaque—by the feel of it a wooden coat of arms—and replaced it on the wall. Then, locating the long tapestry, she pushed it back and fumbled for the door behind. The latch clicked too loudly for comfort, and the door squeaked open on its rusty hinges.
Indeed there was light behind the door—a single wall torch burning—and it shone on an ancient and decrepit stairwell that curved down and away into more darkness. Nell’s heart began a violent thumping, and a strange terror overwhelmed the intense curiosity that normally drove her forward.
This place had the stench of evil about it. Fear was not a common emotion with her, but Nell’s skin was crawling, and even in the chill, she could feel beads of perspiration forming above her lip. The thought passed through her mind that she had gone too far. Eavesdropping on people of importance was one thing. Trespassing here, in Margaret Beaufort’s inner sanctum, was another. If she was found out, the consequences of her snooping might cost her more than her job.
Still, she was driven, like the proverbial cat, by her unrelent-ing curiosity. She lifted the torch from its wall mount and began to descend the well-worn stairs. The smell of mildew and pu-trefaction was quite overwhelming, and she could see mold and moss growing upon the stone walls, and the carcasses of dead rats pushed to the sides of the steps. The place felt ancient, almost primeval, certainly older than the rest of Barkley Manor, perhaps by a thousand years.
Her suspicions were borne out when at the next turn she noticed a Corinthian pillar on either side of the stairs, joined by a carven stone arch. Barkley had been constructed over the ruins of a Roman building! As she descended deeper, the rockwork appeared to be crumbling and the walls dripped with moisture.
All that was needed here was fire, she thought, to make the place hell on earth.
Finally she reached the bottom, a long dirt-floored corridor.
She saw an unlit torch in its mount and lit it with the one she carried. On the opposite wall was illuminated the meaning of this underground chamber—it was a barred cell, a dungeon.
Nell’s stomach churned as she held her torch closer to see the chains and manacles hewn to the wall, and imagined the human suffering that had here taken place. There were more empty dungeons down the line, and such was her utter shock at the revelation of such a place that, until she noticed a crack of light at the end of the corridor, did she wonder what the cook could have been doing down here with a dinner tray.
The thin line of light drew Nell forward. She could see now it was a crack at the top of a tiny door in the center of a large, heavy wooden door. Near it, a key hung on a nail.
What monster must be housed in such a place?
she asked herself.
What evil needs keeping so far from the world as this?
She had heard tales of families who had been forced to lock away forever a relative so insane and murderous that even asylums would not have them. Did Margaret Beaufort or Lord Stanley have such a relation? Would that person, when Henry became king, be such an embarrassment or danger that secret imprisonment was the only answer?
Once more, Nell’s instinct for discovery drove her. She must know who or what lay behind this door. Slowly she swung open the hinged window, poised at any moment to spring back if the fiend should rear up in her face.
But nothing sprang at her, and she stepped closer to peer in.
All she could see in the faint flickering light was a rude pallet, the straw from its mattress falling out in several places, an old blanket crumpled in one corner. There was something poking out from beneath the blanket, something flat and square, and she held her torch up to the window, hoping to cast more light on the object.
It took a moment for her mind to register that the object was familiar to her, and it took an adjustment of the torch to realize, to her horror, exactly what she was seeing.
’Twas the green cover of
Jason and the Argonauts
!
Nell spun away, clapping her hand over her mouth, but she fell to her knees, retching violently in the dirt. She was thus dis-abled when she heard a familiar voice from inside the door.
“Who is it? Who’s there?” came the weak, tiny voice.
It was Dickon. Nell was sure of it. She did not immediately answer, for her mind was chaotic, inundated, frenzied.
How
should she announce herself? In what condition would she find the boys?
And why was Edward not speaking? Oh God, let him be alive!
Now there was a small whimper, and Nell’s heart broke. She wiped her mouth, stood, and grabbed the key from the nail. She leaned close to the window, which was too high for Dickon to see her, and whispered with as much calm as she could muster in her state of agitation, “Dickon, ’tis Nell, sweetheart.”
“Ohh,” was the only sound that came from within.
“I’m going to unlock the door and come in, so stand away.”
“Nell, is it really you, or am I dreaming?”
“No, Dickon, you’re not dreaming. Stand away so that when I open the door—”
“Come in, come in quickly.” His voice was desperate now.
Nell tried to turn the old key in the rusty lock, but it jammed halfway to opening.
“ ’Tis hard to open,” Dickon whispered. “Cook struggles with it every time.”
The old witch!
thought Nell.
Dour-faced jailer of children.
Oh, she prayed it was
children
and not a single child within! She jiggled and finessed the key to no avail.
“Please, please!” Dickon cried.
“Just a moment more,” she lied, for the key was now jammed in the ancient lock.
“I tell you, I heard something clatter to the floor.”
’Twas the cook! Nell heard the woman’s voice echoing down the spiral stairs and along the long dungeon hall.
“We’ll have a look,” the steward answered irritably.
Nell had to act quickly. The key was jammed in the lock and the torch she’d lit was still burning at the base of the stairs.
They would know someone was here! Footsteps were echoing closer now.
With a great yank she ripped the key from the lock and hung it back on the nail.
“Dickon, stay still!” she whispered. “I’ll be back.” She closed the tiny door within the door.
“Noo,” she heard him moan.
Grabbing her own torch, she hitched her nightdress and raced toward the lit torch at the base of the stairs, but the cook and steward were almost at the bottom. There was no time!
Nell extinguished her torch and pushed the closest barred dungeon door, but it was locked. She tried the next. Locked again.
And the next! Finally one opened. She dove in and pressed back into the shadows on the wall toward which the cook and steward were coming.
“You left the lower torch burning again, Mary,” said the irritated steward. “When will you learn?”
“Just stop your pestering and do your job.”
“My job would be easier—”
“Shut your trap, Harold!”
Once they had passed, Nell stealthily pressed up against the bars and looked down the corridor. The steward was placing the key in the lock of the wooden door.
“Damn thing!” he cried, and with a grunt and the shriek of metal on metal, the key pushed through and clicked open. He poked his head in, was quickly satisfied, and slammed the door shut again.
Nell tiptoed to the opposite side of the cell so their torchlight would not illuminate her.
“Now will you leave me in peace, woman?” said the steward.
“You’ll be lucky if I leave you in
one
piece,” the bad-tempered cook rejoined.
They grumbled and nagged at each other all the way up the stone staircase, but Nell waited till she heard the latch click shut at the top before she left the fetid hole. With her doused torch she ran to relight it on the one still burning on the wall. She hurried back to the boys’ cell. This time when she placed the key in the lock it turned with blessed ease. She pulled the door open and beheld the most piteous sight her eyes had ever seen.