The Prince of Lies (Night's Masque, #3)(112)

“And that’s your plan, is it?”

“Do you have a better one?”

Gabriel shook his head.

“Enough of the sweet talk, lover boy!” Ned’s riding partner put a boot to Ned’s shoulder and kicked him over. “Get on your feet. I’m not going to carry your stinking carcass any further than I have to.”

Ned struggled upright and limped over to the man’s horse. Poor creature, it looked exhausted already.

The captain evidently had the same thought.

“We’ll rotate the prisoners to spare the horses,” he said. “Dawson, you take the cripple; Jenkins, your mount looks fresh, you can have the actor.”

Dawson, an ill-favoured fellow with yellow hair sticking out from under his helmet like a scarecrow’s straw filling, glowered at Ned.

“We should hire a couple of mules at the next town, spare our own mounts,” he said.

“Are you giving the orders now, Dawson?”

“No, sir. Just a suggestion, sir.” He led his horse over to Ned, and boosted him into the saddle.

“Good. We’re barely twenty miles from Cambridge. If we ride hard, we can catch up with Catlyn before sunset.”





CHAPTER XXX



Master Fox conducted them back to the dining room and found a replacement pair of breeches for Sidney.

“Thou’ll have to wash those thysen,” he said, indicated the soiled clothing.

“But I’m the prince’s cousin–”

“Aye, we know that. Thou dostn’t think we choose just anyone, dost thou?”

He threw the breeches to Sidney and left them to their own devices. Kit explored the room, examining every window and piece of furniture, but found nothing of interest. After an hour or so the sound of footsteps came down the stairwell, followed by the boys themselves. They trooped past Kit without so much as a word and headed up the steps to the front hall. Even Heron and Shrike barely glanced in the newcomers’ direction. It was all very odd, and Kit didn’t like it one bit.

Master Fox returned and showed Kit and Sidney upstairs. The upper room was as large as the lower one, and served as a dormitory. The two boys were assigned beds near one end, then Fox set them to carrying buckets of water from the well in the rear courtyard back up to the dormitory and filling the jugs on the washstands. When they had done that he gave Sidney a wash-ball to clean the soiled breeches with and sent them back down to the yard.

“Don’t they have any servants here?” Sidney grumbled as he draped the sodden breeches on a bush to dry. The branches bowed under their weight and they fell to the ground, getting dirty again. Sidney burst into tears. Kit picked the breeches up and rinsed off the worst of the muck, then hung them up properly. Wiping his hands on his own clothes he led the way back into the house. One day soon he would test Master Shawe’s finding charm, but not yet. He needed to fill his belly a few more times, and work out where to steal some food from to take with him.



As they neared Cambridge, Coby realised she had never actually been through the town before. The college authorities did not allow companies of players within the bounds lest they distract students from their lectures, so Suffolk’s Men had had to perform outdoors at Stourbridge Fair or avoid Cambridge altogether. On one visit they had skirted the northern edge of the town, where a somewhat decayed and neglected castle stood on a south-facing escarpment. There she had seen the whole town laid out below her like a map: the spires of churches poking up through the trees; the pale towers of the colleges, their new stone and gilded banners gleaming in the sunlight, and the river winding round the western edge and under the bridge at the foot of the hill.

Coming at it from the south, Cambridge was less impressive, its stonework half-hidden behind streets of timbered buildings such as one could see in any market town in England. Unless she raised her eyes to the rooftops she could pretend she was back in London, apart perhaps from the greater number of black-robed scholars in the streets.

“I thought you said the university term was over,” she said to Mal as they approached the town centre.

“It is. If you think there are a lot of students here now, you should see it in a few weeks’ time.”

Coby stared up at a gatehouse as fine as any palace she had ever seen, with a gilded coat-of-arms above the door, topped by a statue of a woman wrapped in a blue cloak and flanked by a crowned red rose and a golden portcullis.

“Christ’s College,” Mal said. “That’s the foundress, Lady Margaret Beaufort, grandmother of old King Henry.”

“She must have been a very great lady, to have founded a college,” Coby said.

“Two colleges. And yes, I believe she was.”

“But you didn’t go here, did you?”

“No. I was at Peterhouse. We’ll visit it later, but first I want to find us rooms for the night.”

They rode down the main street, past at least three more colleges and a great many shops, until they reached a bridge over the river. Ahead was a church, and the hill Coby had climbed all those years ago. Little remained of the castle now except an enormous gatehouse and the ruined keep on top of its mound. She wondered what had happened to the rest of the walls. Taken apart to build more colleges, perhaps.

Mal dismounted and led them to an inn on the far side of the bridge.