Right after we’d checked into our chambers at Aylesbury Manor, my shoulders slumped at the sight of Nick already behind closed doors in another meeting. For all I knew, we could be torn out of Aylesbury by morning to attend to whatever was troubling the realm. If I was going to try to find Agnes Nightingale, I had no time to lose.
The stifling air in my modest dining chamber was laden with pungent smells from our supper of mutton soup, fried beans, fritters, and aged cheese tarts. Alice, Bridget, Lucinda, and Violet chatted cheerfully while I silently fretted whether to ask them about Agnes or attempt to see the soothsayer on my own. Witchcraft was illegal in Tudor times, and Bridget had spared no mercy when sharing her opinions about her heretic cousin. Even worse—what if involving Alice or Bridget got them into trouble? Before I risked that, I had to at least try on my own. As for Nick, I could think of a million reasons why I needed to leave him out of this…not least of which was because he’d wanted to toss the enchanted ring into a fire.
The incoming winter had brought some luck by steering in an early nightfall. With the blue-diamond ring securely on my thumb, I told Alice that I was going to see the king, making clear that we weren’t to be disturbed. I hated giving her orders, watching her curtsy like a lackey, but I needed to be sure that no one would come and look for me.
In the unlit corner of the corridor outside our chambers, I threw on an unadorned traveling cloak. Draping the hood over my hair and keeping my head low, I waited for the patrolling guards to disappear around the corner and hurried in the opposite direction to the rear staircase that led to the buttery and pantries. The downstairs walls were plain brick instead of expensively paneled with linenfold, confirming that I’d reached the servants’ zone.
Getting past the rear door guard was straightforward—none of us were under lock and key, and plenty of nobles came and went from the manor, visiting friends or conducting business in the village. To be safe, however, I kept my head bowed beneath my hood and gave the guard the name “Mistress Grey”, mentally apologizing to Alice for stealing her identity for a night. I wasn’t planning to get into any trouble, but I didn’t need the guard alerting the overprotective king that his fiancée was heading out on the town.
I stepped outside into the frigid night air, my embroidered boots scuffing the gravel as I hurried along the narrow roadside, past wild pigs sloshing in the open drains. I pulled the cloak over my nose to block the stench of sewage and continued down the muddy street, careful not to slip.
When I reached the dim glow of a lantern marking the entrance to an alehouse, I halted, my throat tightening with fear. I considered turning back to the warmth and safety of the manor, but instead, I pushed open the rickety wooden door, my palms slick with sweat.
Inside the dingy alehouse, hard-faced men huddled over flagons of ale. They watched me as I crossed the earthen floor over a sleeping dog, looking for a bar, but there were only self-service barrels of ale. I caught the eye of a skinny man clearing empty mugs.
“Thy a pretty thing to be out late,” he said to me, his lean jaw overwhelmed by a thick blonde beard.
I licked my lips, but they stayed bone dry. “I’m looking for a lady that lives in this town. Her name is Agnes Nightingale.”
His bushy brows met in the middle. “I want no trouble here, madam.”
“No trouble…I just want to see Mistress Nightingale. Do you know who she is?”
“What doth thee accuse me of?” He stepped back, his gaze roaming down my cloak to the embroidered tips of my costly boots. “Thee be here with the king? Raif!” he called, and a gorilla-sized fellow stepped out of the shadows. “This mistress be maketh trouble. Lookin’ for Mistress Nightingale. Best she be on her way.”
The bouncer took my arm and walked me to the door like a dog on a leash. My cloak slipped off my head, and a drunk guy whooped at my pearled hood. “Please,” I said to the doorman, “I need to find Agnes Nightingale tonight!”
“Thee shall find her in the market square,” he said, shoving me into bitingly cold air. The door banged shut behind me, and I darted away from it like ghosts were chasing me. The few crumbling lanterns that actually worked barely lit the street. I hurried farther from the manor until the tangle of black-and-white buildings widened into an uncluttered space that I assumed was the market square. I’d heard of witches leaving markings outside their residences, and I hastened along a row of small doorways, searching for unusual motifs, hanging talismans, or any other signs of black magic. I leaned in to examine a scribble of graffiti on a door when a mangy dog lurched at me through an open window, barking loudly enough to wake my mom in the twenty-first century.
Spinning to escape the alarm the dog raised, I found myself facing the silhouette of a figure hanging by the neck from a wooden frame. My feet dragged me closer in spite of my hammering chest. A young woman dangled from a noose in the dark, her pale face swelled to distortion, her brassy-red curls the only shade of color left in her lifeless body. A picture of a flower within a circle had been scratched into one of her cheeks, leaving streaks of dried blood. The girl hung there in the cold, broken and brutalized, and no one had cut her down.
I backed away, stumbling into a thin figure in a tawny-brown cape. I shrieked, but it was a gentle-faced woman who removed her hood, her startled expression mirroring mine. She smelled like moldy herbs and vegetables.
“They took my daughter,” she said to me. “My daughter, they…they took her and they…” Her prominent chin pointed toward the hanged woman. “They hath said it was allowed, that she would not be…you see, they took my daughter.”
“I’m so sorry,” I stammered. “This is your daughter?” I motioned to the pallid corpse. “Who took her?”
“The king. The King’s Majesty. My daughter maketh her dinner this day, and they…they took her.”
“The king took her?”
“The king’s men…the king’s men.”
“Why?” I cried. Nick couldn’t have done this. “Who’s your daughter?” What did she do to deserve this?
“Mistress Nightingale,” the woman replied, gazing over the girl’s body like it was a sculpture she was considering. “They took my daughter.”
“Agnes Nightingale?”
She nodded. “The king is here, you see…and they took Agnes. They took my daughter.”
I should’ve done something to help the poor mother, but a thousand bricks crushed my chest as I turned back toward Aylesbury Manor, striding toward it with a fury that could’ve set the whole universe on fire.
He’d killed her. I’d been clear to Nick that I wanted to visit Agnes Nightingale—to find out what I could about the blue-diamond ring—and he’d killed her without even talking to me about it first.
I couldn’t get up the manor stairs fast enough. I marched through the king’s chambers and into the oak gallery, pushing through a luxurious curtain of purple velvet.
Expecting to find Nick engaged in another meeting, I halted mid-stride. He was alone, strumming his lute in a straight-backed wooden chair. His linen shirt was loose and untied, his hair unkempt. Moonlight lit up the blue illustrations in the magnificent stained-glass window behind him.