“Oh, Maman. I’d give you my horse, but I must stay with Nicholas,” Emeline said. “Perhaps you and Avice and Martha should go back home and warn the servants to prepare for him. Warm the bedchamber, have water and bandages ready, make a light supper. Gruel – and –”
“Apple codlings,” murmured Nicholas.
“Yes, my dear, the household should be warned indeed. Petronella and Bill must return immediately to prepare the Strand House for his lordship. But,” declared the baroness, “I intend accompanying poor Nicholas and my daughter to The Tower.”
Alan bowed. “My lady, I ride a beast far below your station, but she’s yours, if you’ll have her. I can walk. It’s no more than a spit to the Tower gates.”
Nicholas groaned. “I need no chaperones. Get someone to guard that bastard in the corner, then someone else call the constable. He’s important and I want him alive.”
“Adrian,” said Emeline with an undisguised smile, “will come back home here to a rather unexpected surprise.” She counted. “Four bodies. And rather a mess. Dear, dear.”
But Nicholas needed help down the stairs and it was a long time before he reached the horses waiting below. Harry had remained upstairs on his orders and Rob had gone for the constable and the doctor. David had ridden ahead to warn the authorities at the Tower, and on the baroness’s instructions, Petronella and old Bill had set off for the Strand House to alert the household.
Alan, Jerrid, the baroness, Martha and Emeline, now accompanied by her animated sister, approached the three remaining horses. The baroness mounted Alan’s docile mare, taking Avice up before her. Martha shook her head and stood solid, ready to walk. Nicholas was hoisted into the saddle of his own horse. Jerrid then helped Emeline mount. “No, no, I shall walk,” he told them, “and lead the boy’s horse.” He took the reins, smiling up. “Not used to being treated as a feeble invalid, are you, my boy? But it’s excellent practise, I imagine, if you intend keeping up this life of adventure. Just don’t fall out of the saddle or I shall have to tie you on.”
Nicholas grinned. “Not quite that infirm, uncle. But I seem to be missing a finger or two. I shall miss them.”
“You’ve got eight others,” his uncle nodded. “Dare say they’ll suffice. Now,” he looked around, “is young Adrian in sight?”
He was not. There was no sign either of Adrian, nor of his newly arrived companion. It had stopped raining. The eels had sold, carters were driving out of the dockside, wheels squeaking on wet cobbles, cargo bulging. Another carvel had come in to dock, its gunwales straining against the wooden quayside. Nicholas and his party turned their backs and rode slowly away from the warehouses, heading north east into the vast and brooding shadows of the Tower.
They crossed the moat at the Byward Tower, entering the inner ward. Patrolling guards, alerted to their arrival, escorted the party beyond the curtain wall to the physician’s chambers where David was already waiting. The captain of the guard bowed, the doctor hurried to aid his patient, the horses were led away, Jerrid supported Nicholas across to the long sheeted mattress within the chamber of surgery, turned once with instructions to Alan, said briefly, “My lady, I shall inform you as soon as the physician informs me. But then I must see Brackenbury,” and the doors were quickly closed.
Emeline stepped forward, but the baroness took her hand. “Not yet, my dear. Let the men relate their stories and complain of their injuries. I’m sure dear Nicholas is in very good hands.”
“Well, Jerrid brought him here because the resident doctor is the best. And I believe Brackenbury is Constable of the Tower, and one of the king’s most trusted. He and Nicholas are already friends.”
“So Nicholas could hardly be better served. Meanwhile we shall wait, and wander the grounds.”
Avice had thrown back the hood of her cape, adjusted her little headdress, and was peering around. “It has been an amazing day,” she confided, shaking rain drops from her shoulders. “Maman has ordered me a new gown and it may even be ready by Thursday. It is a real lady’s gown, Emma, and just as nice as some of yours. You’ll see, because I shall wear it all the time. Then we had dinner at a very grand inn, with braised beef and proper Burgundy. After that it was even more exciting and everything happening with swords and running up and down stairs and Nicholas wounded. I’m rather glad I didn’t see anyone’s head cut in half, but it’s nice to know that the bad people got killed. Such an unexpected thing to happen just when I was getting tired of walking. And now this. I do hope we can see the lions.”
“You mean it’s a lucky chance that my husband is wounded close to death?”
The open grounds, banked in grass beyond the cobbled bailey, seemed a maze of walkways and narrow crossings between the huge stone towers, great wooden doorways and guarded paths. The first week of June and the days were long but the rain had coated everything in a drip, drip of shadow. Small braziers had been lit, the flare of torches hung from doorways, flickering through the alleyways past towering stone. It was just as busy and almost as noisy as the dockside. There was a constant scurry of servants with a flap of maids holding on their headdresses as the wind swept up from the river, scullions rushing on duty in their new clean aprons, delivery men pushing a bumping rattle of laden barrows and marketeers’ carts, a trudge of suppliers carrying great leaking baskets of fish, a troop of lawyers, their capes catching the breeze, and the endless tramp of the guards.
Martha now kept to Emeline’s side. “I like a place,” she said, crossing her arms and looking around, “that keeps order. Order means routine and routine means safe keeping.”
“Order? That’s true enough,” nodded Alan. “There’s authorities over authorities and everyone in their proper place with those that work for the lords, and those that work for the lesser folk, and those that work for those that work – and once you set your boots past the moat, then you’re answerable to a hundred more and remembered by two hundred others. Even them ten gardeners has another ten working just on clipping them hedges and sweeping them paths. Day and night, it is, and night is more watched than by day.”
Avice was hopping from one small foot to the other. “And the menagerie?”
“Across by the Lion Tower, mistress,” Alan told Avice, “which is where the mint operates and is best not to go, being as there’s gold and silver stored for the coinage pressing and a dozen guards to guard it.”
“I’m not in the least interested in lions, and I shall wait here until my husband reappears or I am invited in,” said Emeline sternly.
Seagulls, in from the estuary, were flocking along the stone parapets where the walls overlooked the Thames. High tide was seething up the river banks, surging towards the pillars of the Bridge. “Perhaps,” suggested the baroness, raising her voice over the avian complaint, “we should await Nicholas in the church, my dear. A very pretty building they say.”
Emeline sighed. “I suppose prayer is the right thing for such an occasion – but if Nicholas reappears and I am not here waiting –”
It was David who appeared first. “His lordship,” he announced, “is feeling somewhat improved, my lady. And the physician suggests, should you wish to –”
“I most certainly do,” said Emeline, and marched to the door. She turned once. “Take Avice and visit the lions and swans on the moat and the royal apartments and anything else you wish, Maman. I shall find you later.”
The baroness sniffed. “I shall take your sister home,” she informed her. “It has been a long day, the afternoon is fading, and we have walked enough. Since I now have use of four strong hooves, I intend beginning a leisurely stroll back to the Strand, which is where you will find me later, on, Emeline, should you deign to look.” She nodded to Martha, and took her younger daughter’s arm “I am looking forward to a hot supper.”