“No!” I shrieked.
“Take her to the Tower,” Nick snarled without looking at me. “This witch dares enchant and humiliate the King of England. She has attempted to consort with the devil and extort from His Majesty a bastard child. She will stand trial to suffer a traitor’s death.”
“God save the king!” the orchestra of voices repeated. “God save His Grace!”
Their cries overwhelmed my screams as a hundred filthy fingers dug into my skin, stripping me of the rest of my jewelry and lifting me to the raven sky.
21
The fury tearing through my veins obliterated any physical pain as I was manhandled back across the gardens, through the snaking redbrick corridors, and into the gusty west courtyard. The shadowy square teemed with raging men brandishing homemade weapons, their shouts of treason striking me like gunfire from all directions. A subhuman scream cut through the noise, and when my throat burned from the pressure, I realized the roar was mine.
Nobody tried to help me as brutal hands shoved me through the battered gatehouse, across the windy moat bridge, and down the grassy slope leading to the River Thames.
“How could you do this to me!” I howled at the palace wall in the absurd hope that Nick might hear me.
Silence.
My teeth ground together, and my hands balled into fists. Was it possible that his public condemnation of me was just a trick? But it couldn’t be. The chances of Nick openly accusing me of treason and heresy as part of some secret plan left me empty. If he cared about my safety, he would’ve just let me go back to my time. No, it was obvious to me what was happening here: Nick had aligned himself with Norfolk—allowing violent men to haul me away—because I’d wanted to end our relationship for good and leave him. He was never going to let me just walk away, leaving him brokenhearted and humiliated. I’d rejected the vengeful Nicholas the Ironheart one too many times, and now he wanted me to suffer for it. I’d been so stupid to think I was immune to his notoriously unforgiving nature.
“I hate you!” I screamed into the infuriatingly silent sky of stars.
The tides were too low for a barge to dock at the pier, so the rioters pushed me right onto the slippery mudflats. I covered my nose as they marched me across slimy mud soaked in sewage to reach the deeper water.
Somewhere inside the palace, Nick was probably sharing a flask of warmed wine with Henry Howard before an open fire, brown-nosing the former duke to win back the trust of the nobles. I’d been told how dangerous a dissenting duke can be to a king—especially when that duke had won the support of other aristocrats. Despite the risks he had taken for our relationship, Nick had always put his kingdom first, and now he’d handed me over to his enemies to save himself from being dethroned and dishonored. I hoped the guilt of that chewed holes in his insides for the rest of his life.
Another cry of anger burst from my lips as I lost my footing on the slick dirt and face-planted into the putrid sludge.
Two guards hoisted me up by my shoulders and threw me over the barge’s edge, my legs tangling in my skirts caked in mud. As I clung to a bench seat, the barge glided away from the sparkling lanterns of Hampton Court Palace.
Away from Nick, and any hope I had of him intervening in my arrest.
Two guards sat between the oarsmen and me, gripping their swords with both hands. They shivered within their fur wraps. My adrenalin rush was fading, and the freezing air began to pierce through Nick’s filthy coat.
“Ugh!” I grunted as I shook it off my shoulders like it was woven from the webs of spiders. I hurtled the slash of midnight velvet out into the middle of the river. Black water swallowed the costly fabric in seconds.
“Christ in heaven!” spat one of the guards. He reached out and smacked me on the back of my head. I swore at him, using all the modern curse words I could think of.
“Let her freeze,” snarled the other one.
A guard wouldn’t dare strike a queen unless he was sure her fate was already sealed. Whatever Henry Howard had done to poison the country against me was beyond repair, and now I didn’t even have the blue-diamond ring so I could disappear. If only I’d told Nick what the witch had said about the enchanted ring losing all its power. Maybe then he wouldn’t have bothered jerking it off my thumb, and I’d still have been able to escape.
I wrapped myself into a tight ball and shivered into my knees, praying that the journey would pass quickly. When the temperature dropped, the men on the boat ceased their chatter, leaving only the eerie soundtrack of oars cutting through the frosty river flow. My mind doubled back to the last time I’d been imprisoned at the Tower of London—the lecherous jailers and threats of torture—and I pushed each terrifying memory away.
One minute at a time, Emmie. Just live through this next minute.
I was so cold that I considered begging the guards for one of their furs. But determined to hold on to any dignity I had left, I instead refocused my mind by picturing a sun-swept beach speckled with palm trees. It got me through the time it took to reach the onion-shaped turrets of the Tower that dominated the skyscape. As if waiting for us, the Traitor’s Gate portcullis stretched open its sharp teeth to swallow us whole. A single pigeon flew low, swooping past my ear. I envied the bird’s freedom, its uncomplicated life. It’d never dream of trying to live four hundred years back in time with a capricious Tudor king predestined to become a tyrant. Nicholas the Ironheart—it wasn’t like I’d never been warned about his vindictive nature.
“I need water,” I grunted as the boatmen tossed the ropes over the wooden posts. Ignoring my request, the guards shoved me onto the rotting deck that did little to improve the rancid, decomposing stink of the river.
I gazed up at the impossibly tall fortress of the Tower of London with its stone battlements, menacing slit windows, and double defensive walls. The death site of three sixteenth-century Queens of England.
You’re not leaving here alive, Emmie.
The crippling terror in my body glued my short heels to the cobblestones, and the guards had to drag my weakened legs up the jagged slope. At the base of the stone stairs leading to the gardens, a man waited in a cap and black cloak with silver buttons. It was Master Carey, the Constable of the Tower, who’d handled my imprisonment here last time—back when this time-traveling mess began.
“Hello again,” I said to him, followed by an abrupt chuckle. I was becoming delirious, which was probably a symptom of hypothermia.
Master Carey said little as he gravely escorted me upstairs to the royal lodgings inside the tower of St. Thomas, where I’d stayed the night before my coronation. I hid my surprise—and relief—that I wasn’t being led downstairs to a cell. For a second, I thought Nick might be waiting in the royal apartments for me, ready to reveal that this was nothing more than an off-color joke—the worst prank ever played. But then I berated myself for giving him that much credit: the chambers were devoid of any kingly splendor, the priceless furnishings and wall tapestries stripped away, leaving only a barren, drafty space.
Instead of the spacious bedchamber I’d slept in last time, I was steered into a smaller room and left alone, the stark clang of an iron lock bolting shut behind me. Tugging on the rigid handle assured me that I was a prisoner here. I marked the length of the space with thirteen short paces along the tiled floor that reached a small fireplace. The rest of the modest room held only a single bed, an oak desk, and a standing candelabrum that I momentarily considered stabbing a guard with in an effort to escape.