Page 43 of A Murder on London Bridge
At last the gate to Whitehall stood in front of us. Not the grand processional one, but a side entry with a door that had learned to open to the right kinds of knocks.
“Here,” Hollingsworth said. “Quickly.”
The guard there was the yellow-bearded one with the cracked tooth—good-natured so long as one was on the right side of him. Tonight his face looked different—younger, almost, or perhaps simply peeled down to its worry. Hollingsworth spoke to him too low for me to hear. But the result was what mattered. We were allowed inside.
Whitehall had its own kind of smoke—beeswax, rushes, the perpetual grease of meat, old cloth, perfume. Tonight all of it sat under the new smell like a second skin gone loose and peeling. A clerk brushed past with an armful of papers, anxious as a hen. A boy ran, then skidded to a halt because a running boy will always be shouted at by someone, even when the world is burning.
“Lady Halloran.” The voice came from behind me. I turned to find one of the Queen’s Portuguese ladies, the pretty one with pearl drops. Her eyes had the calm of someone who had made up her mind. “You will come.”
“I am going there,” I said. “To Her Majesty.”
She dipped her chin in approval, then spared Hollingsworth only a single, swift glance that managed to take the measure of him without practicing any impoliteness I could catch her at. “You also,” she said to him. “A little way.”
We went together, the lady leading as surely as if she had a thread tied to the Queen’s hand. The corridors had the wrong kind of life in them—servants darting, courtiers moving in clusters like cautious fish. Enough people had heard the wordfireto make speed, but they had not yet seen it to make a show of composure.
Catherine stood in her withdrawing room with two women at her elbows and a third kneeling on the floor before a small coffer where her jewels lay. Beside it, a sturdier strong box waited, its iron fittings dull in the lamplight—a chest meant not for ornament but for coin, deeds, and whatever could not be left behind.
She showed no fear, only resolve. And wore a practical gown, the silk chosen for how well it moved rather than how it shone. When she raised her head and saw me, the muscles at the corner of her mouth softened. I felt absurdly pleased that I had impressed a difficult teacher.
“You are here,” she said. “Good.” Her eyes touched Hollingsworth next, cool and reading. “You also.”
“A moment in private, Your Majesty,” I said.
“No time for private. Speak now.” When I glanced at her Portuguese ladies, she said, “I trust them.”
“We heard Parquier at the Swan Tavern,” I said. “He set the fire as a cloak to harm Your Majesty.” It felt strange to use titles in a room where one woman’s pulse was at stake, but the habit of them is a strong thing.
Hollingsworth bowed with the precise degree of deference one uses when there is no time for more. “They mean to move against you while the city’s eyes are elsewhere.”
“Your Majesty,” I said, because I could not. “We must not let them within reach. Their words named you. Their hatred was explicit.”
“Carlos knows,” she said. “He sends men.” A beat. “He will send more.”
Her English grew flatter when she was weighing consequences. I could see the work of it in the set of her jaw, the careful order she placed on every clause. She took my hand for a moment—quickly, as if the gesture embarrassed her—and then let it go. “You will stay near,” she added. “Tonight.”
I nodded. It was not a command I had intended to resist.
Hollingsworth’s eyes slid to mine with a meaning I could not mistake:You must be where I can find you. For his strategy, for my safety, and perhaps for something he would never say aloud. There are times when a woman’s independence is a matter ofdignity. There are others when it is a matter of folly. I am not so foolish that I could never tell the difference.
The door opened without ceremony, and a man I recognized as one of the king’s men put his head in. He had the flustered air of a person who has just retired a necessary lie. “Your Majesty, the King asks—if it please—he asks that Your Majesty’s women assemble the small coffer and the strong box. The wind is … shifting.”
In other words, the fire was growing closer to Whitehall.
“The wind is trouble,” Catherine said, as a humorless smile touched her mouth. Her glance went to her women. “The jewel chest and the strong box,” she said simply. “Watched, always.”
“Yes, madam,” said the kneeling girl. Jewelry chests and strong boxes, like queens, do not travel with legs of their own. Still, the ritual mattered. They would be watched.
The gentleman bobbed and fled.
“Tell me again,” she said to me, softer now that the room had emptied a little. “What he said. Word for word.”
It was not a speech for civilized ears. “They know you will flee to the Thames. Men watch every exit from Whitehall. They will shepherd you toward hidden passages and barges crewed by traitors—boats that will be sent downriver and then sunk with all aboard. In that wash of water and flame, they will rid themselves of a troublesome Queen.”
When I finished, she pressed her fingers together until the knuckles made neat white lozenges beneath the skin. Then she breathed out and looked to Hollingsworth. “You will watch for him. This Parquier. Vanity will draw him back to Whitehall. He will want to see his scheme unfold. You will bear witness. You will bring word.”
Reluctance flickered in his eyes. I saw it as plainly as the set of his jaw. He longed to remain at her side, to stand betweenher and danger. But loyalty bound him tighter than desire. He bowed his head. “As Your Majesty commands.”
There was no bravado in it—only duty, reluctant yet unyielding. And there are few promises graver than those spoken against a man’s own heart.
