My Lady Jane(111)

She hoped tonight wouldn’t be too much of a scrape.

Ahead of them, a large priory stood against the darkening sky. Jane knew this land well—she and Edward had sometimes played near here as children. There were several abbeys in this part just outside of London, and a church, gardens, and a hospital. She could already see the Tower and its many structures before them, rising against the night. Torches shone along the walls. She wondered where Edward was—if he was circling overhead already, waiting for her. But she didn’t see him. It was too dark.

“Look here,” Gifford said, glancing around. “We’re on Tower Hill.”

Jane shuddered. They were standing on the ground where Gifford was to have been executed not so long ago. A huge, newly built pyre stood nearby, stacked with brush just waiting to be lit. Awaiting the E?ians Mary had been rounding up over the last few weeks. Jane had never seen a burning, but one of her books—The Persecution of E?ians Throughout the Ages: A Detailed Account of Animal Form Downfall—had indeed given detailed accounts of the way one died when burned at stake. A terrible, painful death.

That was meant to be Gifford. Her Gifford. Her stupid horse husband who didn’t even try to control his form. Who didn’t love her, not the way she loved him. But Jane would fight any war if it meant keeping him safe.

She reached for Gifford’s hand and found him already reaching for hers. If they failed tonight, this pyre would be waiting for both of them by dawn.

They hurried by the Aldgate and farther south down East Smithfield Road, until they reached Saint Katherine’s Abbey. The three of them aimed for the gardens, keeping to the heavy brush and weeds that grew on the river’s edge.

“This is as far as you go,” Jane said as they settled behind a low wall near the abbey. She pointed across a dark field, toward a small bridge that crossed the moat and led straight into the Tower of London. The Iron Gate—Jane’s destination—stood on the other side, a lowered portcullis blocking the way in. There were four guards on the bridge; it didn’t require much in the way of sentries, which was why she’d chosen it.

She took a moment to catch her breath. The Thames rushed by not twenty feet away, but Jane could hardly hear the noise over the pounding of her own heartbeat as she watched the guards, analyzing their movements, trying to find a pattern.

“I don’t like this.” Gifford glanced at her worriedly. “It’s not safe.”

“It’s not your choice,” she snapped, but softened when he winced. “I must. And you know I must. I’m the only one who can. A horse would get caught. Even a dog. But not me.”

“My darling, I don’t think ferrets are as stealthy as you imagine.”

Jane pinched his arm. “I’m as stealthy as I need to be. I rescued you from Beauchamp Tower, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but—”

“And I could hold perfectly still if I wanted.”

“Not even while you sleep, my sweet.”

“And I could vanish for hours and you’d never find me.”

“Only because you’d have fallen asleep in the fold of some forgotten blanket.” But he looked terrified. “Please reconsider.”

“It’s the only way,” she said, lifting her eyes to his. Waiting. Hoping. Wanting him to say something more. Hadn’t she proved her feelings last night when she didn’t change? If he’d just say something now, that might help ease the knot of emotions and anxiety.

Pet sighed and rolled onto the ground, bored.

Jane turned into a ferret.

The light from her change must have alerted the guards, because even as Gifford dumped Jane over the low wall they’d been hiding behind—and she crashed and rolled into the weeds on the other side—she heard a shout, and then Pet began barking and Gifford shuffled to another hiding place.

There was no time to worry about them now. Jane took off at a speedy walk—because running ferrets were very bouncy and not stealthy at all. Gifford did have a point about that.

As she sped through the high grass, what had been a short walk suddenly became much longer now that she was tiny. She missed her human sight, too, though as a ferret the darkness wasn’t quite so impenetrable. And also, she could hear the guards far better.

“Look for an E?ian,” one guard called from the middle of the bridge.

“Kill any animal you see!”

Jane’s tail felt huge and prickly. Instinct urged her to run in the opposite direction. (She had read somewhere that ferrets were fearless creatures, but she didn’t believe that, even if she was a ferret with a human mind. Ferrets wanted to live as much as anyone else.)

“Look, a dog! Get it!”

Boots struck the ground. She couldn’t tell how many went away from the bridge. Surely not all of them—they wouldn’t leave this entrance to the Tower completely unguarded.

She lifted her head, and looked around. Sniffed around, we should say, now that she had such an excellent nose.

First, she smelled the foul odor of sewage from the moat, and she immediately regretted her excellent nose. Then she tried to block out the stink and search for different notes in the air. Plants. Mold. Sweat.

There were two humans still here, she surmised after a moment of smelling and listening, both with their weapons drawn, ready to kill any animal they saw.

Ready to kill her.