It sounded side-splittingly bonkers, and yet, amid a myriad of unfathomable experiences this past year, something about it felt spot-on, like everything had finally fallen into place.
“Lex talionis,” the girl’s singsong voice whispered on the curve of the wind. I still had to find out what that meant.
I rounded the final bend to Robin House—thirsting for the warmth of my bed—when I spotted a shiver of candlelight from the upstairs window. Crap, I’ve been found out! I rushed up the pathway that clung to the side of the manor. In the front yard, a huddle of guards clutching lanterns hovered around one of the watchmen who sat on a tree log beside the stables.
“The queen is here!” Alice yelped from behind me, and a guard separated himself from the pack to escort me to where she waited on the manor’s front step.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Alice, who asked, “Where did you go?” at the same time.
“I–I just popped outside for a few minutes because I couldn’t sleep, and I was so sweaty inside and couldn’t get away from the heat of the fires,” I said.
Her palm hit her open mouth. “Heavens, no…not you, Emmie.”
“Not me, what?”
Alice’s alarmed eyes darted to where the guards had gathered.
“What’s happening over here?” I called, striding back to them, my boots crunching the dense snow. “It’s the dead of night.” Their lanterns bounced flickers of light as I approached.
“Step back, Your Highness!” snapped the young guard, blocking me from getting any closer. I could see that the seated guard was Joseph Blackburn. Why was his face covered with bees?
I gasped, nauseated, as the truth broke over me. They weren’t bees: they were hundreds of pus-filled welts.
“He has smallpox,” I said, clutching my sickened stomach. That’s why he had been suffering from those awful headaches.
“You must take leave inside, Your Grace,” said the guard. “We shall keep Mister Blackburn here for now.”
“Outside? In this freezing weather—are you mad?”
“We cannot chance spreading the pox to your person, your highness. The servants’ attic is above your chamber. Mister Blackburn may sleep in the stables.”
I was so stunned that I couldn’t speak properly. “Don’t be insane! Alice and I will stay downstairs…or in the cabin outside.”
Alice had appeared beside me, snow flurries landing on her cheeks. “Be calm, Emmie. I have sent word to my coachman to come for us in haste. The pox is terribly contagious, and it is no longer safe here. The guard is already riding to Hampton Court, and the coachman should be here by morning.” She gently urged me toward the house.
“He is not staying out here,” I said through worried tears. Joseph Blackburn hunched forward, his head hanging into his knees. Inflamed blisters speckled the back of his neck. I’d learned enough about smallpox to know that the lesions didn’t appear until the person had been exposed to the virus for weeks. He’d most likely caught it when I took him down to the infected village. It was my fault that he was sick.
Alice huffed at me, her face torn with distress. I didn’t want to be difficult, and I was the queen now and had to be protected, even if I hated being put on a special pedestal above everyone else.
“Mistress Grey and I will sleep in the guest lodging this night,” I said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “It’s not likely to be contaminated, and there’s a small fireplace in there. Mister Blackburn can come inside the house at once. If Alice and I are leaving the manor anyway, he can use my bedchamber.”
“Clemence and I will make ready the guest lodging,” said Alice. She scurried back into the manor.
“Please, somebody help him with food and water, or I’ll do it myself,” I ordered the guards. “If you wash your hands constantly and thoroughly—and stay well clear of any coughs or sneezes—I can’t see why you wouldn’t be fine. I’ll send a doctor back here as soon as I can.”
I hurried upstairs to scrub my hands and the blue-diamond ring in a pail of soapy water before changing into a fresh nightgown. I tossed every piece of fabric I’d worn to the village into the fireplace to be safe.
The moment I met Alice in the cabin out the back, she pressed a hand to my forehead. “Do you feel the heat even now?” she said with a pinched brow.
“I’m not sick,” I said in a reassuring tone. “I swear that it was just a hot flush. I get them sometimes.”
You mean you were in the smallpox village, chatting with a witch about time travel and curses on the king. Things they kill people for around here.
I secured the blue-diamond ring inside the toe of one of my riding boots. Once Alice and I had built a fire, we both stretched out on the single mattress after I refused to let her sleep on the floor. There had been so much commotion that I hadn’t really taken in that we were returning to Hampton Court Palace in the morning. It was hard to lie still and not disturb Alice through my overwhelming relief. I didn’t give a toss that some of the men who wanted me dead might be at the palace, lying in wait. I was ready to go home, where I could call for doctors to help Mister Blackburn and I could be among the first to receive news about King Nick.
Nick, who wasn’t meant to be in the north of England in the dead of winter, putting his life on the line for a twenty-first-century girl who’d muscled her way into his world. The witch had studied the ring and said it herself: Nick was supposed to be living in my time, with me—that was the point of the blue-diamond ring coming into his life.
The problem was that we’d already made our decision to stay in the sixteenth century, where we’d been in near-constant danger. The enchanted ring was nearly out of juice, Nick was at war with a murderous former duke, and the peaceful happiness that the witch Joanie had tried to bring Nick—and me—had slipped right through our fingers.
18
Given that the king was away battling a violent uprising, I braced myself for a spiritless and somber court. The moment we arrived back at Hampton Court Palace, however, it was clear I was way off the mark. A merry clash of lutes and oboes bled jubilantly from the stained-glass windows of the Great Hall as Alice Grey and I climbed the stairs in our traveling cloaks. With trestle tables stretching through the hall and into the neighboring Great Watching Chamber, men and ladies of the court sat giggling and chattering over jugs of ale and steaming platters of roasted halibut and turbot—as lively as I’d ever seen them.
That was until they saw me.
Lord and Lady Snell spied us first, followed by the Earl of Dorset, the sneering Ascots, and the remaining courtiers as a wave of awkward silence devoured the space. Nobody rose to bow to me—their new queen—and there was a severe shortage of smiles. I hadn’t missed the glacial temperatures of the Tudor court, and I wasn’t talking about the weather.
“It appears our arrival has made good time for supper,” Alice said. “I could eat a swine.”
Her comment barely registered over the ocean of accusing eyes still glaring at us. Alice made an unsettled murmur about the queen dining in private, and we continued through the Great Watching Chamber, nearly colliding with a servant boy grappling with a platter of fish from the servants’ stairs.