The Prince of Lies (Night's Masque, #3)(98)

Out in the cool night air, her courage almost failed her. There was so far to go yet, and she still did not know if she could even get them out of the fortress. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, then scuttled across the short walkway, hunched down low enough not to be easily spotted by a sentry.



Mal looked around the room, checking he hadn’t forgotten something. He wore his blades and carried a modest sum of money in his purse, but that was all; he did not want to be laden down for this venture. All his spare clothes and other belongings had been packed and sent to Deptford with Sandy and Gabriel.

“Are you sure you won’t come with us?” he said to Ned.

His friend shook his head. “We belong in London, Gabe and me. Anyway, with you lot gone for good, I doubt the guisers will care about us.”

“You know I’d stay, if it weren’t for Kit and Coby. ’Tis not cowardice that drives me away.”

“I know.” Ned clapped him on the shoulder, and gave him a sympathetic look. “I’d do the same for Gabe, if it came to it.”

They made their way down to the courtyard, and Mal cautiously opened the wicket gate. The curfew bell had long since rung and the night was as black as he could wish, not even a glimmer of moonlight visible in the narrow streets. Here and there a lantern burned outside a house, enough to light their way but casting plenty of shadows too.

Mal stepped out into the street, ears alert for any sound of a watchman or a lurking footpad. This side of midnight there were still a few late revellers about, too emboldened by drink to care about the watch and too blinded by it to notice a predator in an alley-mouth until it was too late. Armed and sober men made an unattractive target in comparison, but Mal wanted no trouble tonight.

Slipping from shadow to shadow they made their way down Long Southwark and across Saint Olave’s Street to a riverside lane. Dozens of wherries bobbed against the jetty, waiting for their owners to return at dawn. On the far bank, the Tower was lit up like a pleasure garden, torches burning at intervals along the wall-walks and around the tops of the towers. Mal’s heart sank. It was a goodly distance from Saint Thomas’s Tower to the easternmost corner of the castle; could Coby get that far without being caught?

“Too late to back out now,” Ned whispered, catching his mood. “Help me untie one of these, will you?”

A few minutes later they were sliding across the murky waters of the Thames, with Mal at the oars and Ned crouched in the bows, steering them towards the darkness at the downriver end of the Tower. Mal wondered how the ferrymen managed to cross the river so easily when they couldn’t see where they were going.

“Slow down!” Ned hissed. “I can hear another boat.”

Mal glanced back over his shoulder. The waters all along the Tower quayside glittered gold in the torchlight, but in one spot the slow rhythm of the current was disturbed by a dark shape not much bigger than their own boat. As Mal watched, it disappeared into the tunnel under the wharf that led to Traitor’s Gate.

“We should follow them,” Ned said. “If the water gate’s open, we can get right inside the castle, can’t we?”

“No. The last thing we need is to be caught in a confined space, and anyway we could miss Coby and Kit altogether.” He bent to the oars again. “We stick to the plan.”



Kit woke in the night, his mouth dry as paper and his bladder aching. Perhaps the sleeping draught hadn’t been as strong this time, or perhaps he was getting used to it already. Sidney was still snoring at his side, his arm flung out across the blankets. Kit thought of poor Edward, dying in his bed only a few yards from here. Perhaps he wouldn’t get up and use the chamberpot just yet. It was easy enough to scoff at ghosts in the daytime, but at night when footsteps echoed and shadows shifted in the moonlight … It couldn’t be long until dawn, surely?

The ache in his bladder got worse, and he was just about to chance getting out of bed when he heard the door of their chamber creak. Was that Master Weston coming to wake them for breakfast, or the prince’s ghost? He waited, heart pounding so loud he wondered that it didn’t wake Sidney. The whisper of shoeleather on stone came nearer and nearer the bed. He wriggled upright, hardly daring to breathe. Should he wake Sidney? No, his companion would only tease him about it if it turned out to be nothing more than a servant.

The footsteps halted close to the bed. Light moved beyond the curtains, but not on the same side as the footsteps. There were two of them? Kit backed against the headboard, and next to him Sidney stirred.

“You awake, Catlyn?” the other boy mumbled.

At that moment the curtains were wrenched aside. Kit had a momentary glimpse of an unfamiliar man’s face, yellow and black in the candlelight, then something was pulled down over his head, like Uncle Sandy’s hat in the game of Hoodman Blind. A drawstring tightened about his throat and rough hands seized him. Kit kicked and tried to shout for help, but drawing breath only sucked the sacking dust into his mouth and made him choke. In his panic his full bladder gave way.

“Gah! Little bastard pissed all over me!”

“Less wriggling, little master,” a second voice growled, “unless you want to feel the back of my hand.”

Kit lay still, just as he was told, whilst they bound his wrists and ankles and wrapped him in something that felt like a blanket. One of the men hoisted him up, threw him over his shoulder and carried him out of the portcullis chamber, past the garderobe to the spiral stairs. At first Kit thought – hoped – they were going to the upper chamber, and that this was nothing worse than some cruel new jest of Prince Henry’s, but the man went down and down, through a small room and down again into a great echoing space like a cellar. Finally they were out into the cool night air and the man halted as if waiting for something.