Uneasy Lies the Crown Page 14

  Naturally, this led to her favorite form of rhetoric, the scolding lecture. She devoted six full pages of stationery (which sported a wide black border) to an attempt (vain, I need hardly say) at stopping me from any and all involvement with detectives, murderers, and other unsavory characters. While I admit to agreeing with her judgment that the wretched Inspector Gale was not a fit acquaintance for me, I would go further, saying he was a fit acquaintance for neither man nor beast. But, unlike my mother, I reached my conclusion as a result of observing his character, not by passing judgment based solely on his occupation.

  She finished by sending her warmest regards to Colin and the boys. I crumpled the pages into a small ball and flung it into the fire. I had no intention of favoring her with a reply, but did wonder if she would ever grow tired of her relentless barrage of criticism. No doubt that was too much to hope for. I prodded at the burning paper with a brass poker and returned to my desk. When I reached the final envelope in my pile, I found inside a note from Mrs. Rillington, the helpful yeoman warder’s wife, and the map she had promised to send indicating the locations of hidden passages in the Tower. She reiterated that one of the wives had made a project of exploring the passages, but no longer lived in the Tower. Her husband had retired and they were now living abroad.

  I admit to giving way to a number of thrilling flights of fancy about what I might find in these tunnels, and was in such a state of reverie when my husband entered the room that I did not immediately respond to the derisive comment he made as he looked at the map over my shoulder.

  “I suppose it would be too much to hope that you won’t insist on going yourself to explore every dank nook and cranny you can find,” he said. “As I’ve warned you before, do try not to irritate the yeoman warders. The raven master in particular.”

  “You know perfectly well that we must follow up on this,” I said. “We still have no idea how the murderer entered the Tower. Mrs. Rillington has offered to accompany me.”

  “You should take Bainbridge with you as well. No one would mistake him for someone involved in a criminal investigation, and he’s likely to charm the guards. I’ll ring him myself and arrange for him to collect you.”

  1415

  24

  Cecily considered Father Simon’s words carefully. It was true that her mother would have preferred a contemplative life, but that was never what Cecily desired. She would have to better balance the active and the contemplative, just as Christine de Pizan recommended. She vowed to give more alms and to spend more time visiting those less fortunate than herself. And she promised she would be a better friend to Adeline.

  This proved simple enough for the next week. The weather had turned cooler, and the ladies spent less time riding and more in the castle. Cecily bent over her needlework, having completed the figure of the first of the ladies in her scene—the one holding the book. Adeline took to sitting with Father Simon. The baron and a large group of friends had embarked on a hunting trip the day after Cecily had heard him arguing loudly with his wife, and in his absence, Adeline behaved like a model of propriety. On some nights, she refused to let Dario Gabrieli perform, instead insisting Cecily read aloud. On the third day after the hunters had set off, Adeline asked Father Simon to hear her confession, telling him that she felt so terrified by her husband’s priest, that she could not escape the worry that she would make a bad confession whenever she knelt before him, not deliberately, but because she was too scared to speak with an open heart.

  And so, Father Simon became Adeline’s confessor, and she spent hours with him each afternoon, discussing spiritual matters. She began to display a piety apparently more sincere and of greater depth than she ever had before. When she saw Cecily preparing alms, she added to them and pledged to visit any ailing tenants on her husband’s estate. The next morning, the ladies together went to the village and distributed alms, and the day after that, Adeline asked to borrow Cecily’s copy of The Treasure of the City of Ladies.

  “I know I sometimes do not conduct myself in the best manner,” she said as Cecily placed the book in her hands. “I can’t even claim that I always try to, but I do very much want to do better, and as these words seem to have brought you strength and guidance, perhaps they can do the same for me.”

  So Cecily embroidered while Adeline read, night after night. The other ladies of the household complained at the lack of entertainment, but Adeline only scolded them, imploring them to use the time to improve their own characters. She retired early to her chamber, explaining that she wanted to pray.

  One evening, Cecily, consumed by a complicated floral section of her needlework, remained downstairs long after Adeline had gone to bed. When at last she cast her work aside and started up the stairs, the house was quiet, everyone else already asleep.

  Or so she thought.

  As she crossed the corridor near Adeline’s room en route to the small staircase that would lead her up to her own chamber, she heard soft laughter and then the click of a latch. She pressed herself against an alcove in the wall, hiding herself in the darkness, and watched as Dario Gabrieli emerged from Adeline’s door, a satisfied smile on his face.

  Now Cecily understood the change in Adeline’s behavior since her husband left for the hunt. The baroness had cynically designed her attempts at leading a more admirable life to cover up her affair, so that no one would suspect her of wrongdoing. There could be no question that Cecily must intervene, must attempt to stop her from continuing on this evil path, but she knew not where to begin. Alone and helpless, she knew that only God could guide her now.

  * * *

  Due to the location at which they crossed the Somme, some in the English army began to hope that the French, who had expected them elsewhere, would not force a battle. Instead, heralds delivered a message from two great French dukes and the constable of France to King Henry, offering to fight at a mutually agreeable time and place. The king, proving again of far greater honor than the dauphin, showered the heralds with gifts and sent a reply informing the French that they were welcome to fight him whenever and wherever they wished. The English would not hide from the challenge and did not consider it necessary to arrange the details in advance.

  From then on, the army had to be always at the ready, dressed and armed, displaying their coats of arms. Henry visited his men, to rally them and remind them that he, too, was a soldier. They would not be fighting for him, but with him.

  Every day now, William saw more signs that the French were close, but he never laid eyes on a single member of their army. The English kept marching, on and on, through rain and mud, as the weather grew colder. So focused was the king on making forward progress, that on one night he neglected to stop at the town in which he was to lodge. When he realized his error, he made no move to correct it. Rather than go back, even this small distance, he continued on. He would not let anyone see the king of England, bearing his coat of arms, retreat for any reason at all.

  Then, on 24 October, the army crossed the river at a town called Blangy, and the word they had anticipated at last came: they were but three miles from the French, who had amassed an enormous army. When they reached a hilltop, the sight of their enemy pouring into the valley below, banners streaming, brought home to William the disparity in the size of the forces. One could not even compare the two. It was as if a scrappy group of wanderers was to face the strongest military in Europe.

  The king, undaunted, stood before his men. They dismounted, and Henry began to speak, giving them his battle plan, putting them in formations, and in all ways encouraging them, down to the lowliest soldier. This was a man who could turn even a scrappy group of wanderers into a formidable fighting force. This was a man who understood the way both the desire to fight and fear consumed them. Bravery, after all, required a certain amount of fear—or at least the recognition and acceptance of the danger one was about to face. No man, if he was honest, could claim to be entirely free of fear before battle. If that were the case, there would not
be so many of them lined up, waiting to offer a last confession before the bloodshed began.

  William made his peace with God and looked again at the French, wondering if they would fight. Would it not be wiser for them to let the English continue on to Calais? Once King Henry and his men had crossed the channel and were home, the French could attack Harfleur, and if they won it back—which William thought they could, knowing all too well the sad condition of the forces left there—the English victory would be erased, and their campaign in France meaningless.

  There were so many French soldiers, led by the finest knights in their realm. Could such an army be persuaded not to fight? They would follow orders; all good military men did. But could their leaders resist slaughtering what, to them, must seem a feeble enemy? God would decide.

  William thought the battle might come that very day, but the French made no move. They might think the English weak, but William knew better. He and his brothers-in-arms would fight for their king, for their wives and sweethearts, for their land. They would fight with the strength and fury of men who knew the day would end in either glory or death. No English soldier had forgot what the French had done to the captured archers at Soissons: they cut off their bow fingers, gouged out their eyes, and gelded them before massacring them. The tales of their brutal treatment still filled William with rage. Who would not fight to the death rather than be subjected to such an ignoble end?

  Still, one could not altogether ignore the fear. As the sun sank low in the sky, William knew there would be no fighting until the morrow. The night that stretched before him would be the longest of his life.

  1901

  25

  As Colin had suspected, the yeoman warders balked when Jeremy and I arrived at the Tower. The wretched Inspector Gale had ordered them to keep me away from his investigation. Jeremy, in his most pompous drawl, explained that we had come to call on Mrs. Rillington for tea, after which he hoped to see some of the more gruesome bits of the place.

  “You know, Sir Walter Raleigh is an ancestor of mine,” he said to the guard. “I figured it was time I took some interest in his imprisonment and execution.”

  “Is that so, your grace?” The guard stood up a bit straighter and looked rather impressed. “If you’ll just sign the register here, you can go straight to Mrs. Rillington.”

  We did as instructed. As we walked toward the Rillingtons’ rooms, I took Jeremy’s arm and leaned close to him. “I had no idea you were descended from Raleigh.”

  “Oh, I’m not. It’s just that he was the only person I could remember who had been held here who embodies any of my own dashing qualities. I knew the guard would like it.”

  “You are a terrible person.”

  “Thank you for noticing.”

  We paused for a brief tea with Mrs. Rillington before the three of us set off on our exploration. Many of the passages marked on the map were now so well-known that they could hardly be called secret, but others so thoroughly disguised, I wondered how anyone could find them. There were trapdoors leading to long underground corridors that joined the buildings within the Tower and cunning mechanisms that opened hidden tunnels. Jeremy was particularly taken with a clever system that revealed a staircase behind what looked like a solid stone wall, while a tunnel that went all the way beneath the now-empty moat fascinated me.

  “The staircase is much more interesting,” Jeremy said.

  “Yes, but the tunnel proves that there are still ways into the Tower that allow one to avoid detection by the guards,” I said.

  “Except that the end of that passage is now locked,” Mrs. Rillington said. “If we follow it all the way, you’ll see that an iron door prevents anyone from entering through it.”

  “That does not mean there can’t be another that remains accessible.” Undaunted, I gripped a candle firmly in my hand and set off to make a methodical exploration of the passages that went from tower to tower, below the ground. For the most part, this proved straightforward. The tunnels allowed for access primarily to dungeons and prison cells, but further scrutiny revealed less obvious branches of them. The mechanism that hid Jeremy’s beloved staircase was used down here, too, and careful inspection of the tunnel walls enabled us to discover three paths not on our map. The first took us to a rickety helical staircase that led to the undercroft of the White Tower. The second ended abruptly at a wall of dirt, as if the medieval excavators had tired of the project and abandoned it.

  The third, however, stunned and horrified me.

  We had already burned through two candles apiece. Jeremy, who had brought with him an electric torch, brandished it with pride, but unfortunately had to shut it off periodically so that the batteries would not die. I preferred the flickering candlelight to its steady glow—it felt more authentic—but as the tunnel narrowed and patches of damp appeared on its stone walls, I began to wish for more illumination.

  Mrs. Rillington paused. “I wonder if we should keep going. We’ve come awfully far, haven’t we?”

  “It feels that way,” Jeremy said, “but we aren’t more than a ten-minute walk from the entrance to the passage. I think we’re near the river now, hence the water.”

  The sound of constant dripping accosted us, and puddles dotted the ground, but the walls remained immobile when I pushed against them with my hand. I had been keeping track of our location as best I could, using a compass and the map as my guide, but could only guess at the distance we had traveled. It appeared that we were, as Jeremy suggested, quite close to the Thames, beneath the outer walls, somewhere between the Cradle Tower and Henry III’s water gate.

  Jeremy, who had gone ahead of us ladies, called out, “There’s quite a lot of water here. I’m not sure we should continue.”

  I went toward him, and soon had to hold up my skirts to keep them from getting wet. My boots and stockings were already soaked. I lifted my candle close to the walls, looking for any sign of a hidden door or another passage. By the time the water reached close to my knees, Jeremy was pleading with me to turn around.

  “Em, my trousers are ruined, I’ll be scandalized if you raise your skirts any higher, and I’m convinced I stepped on something that used to be a rat. There’s nothing for us here.”

  “Not quite,” I said. I pointed to a stone in the wall. The mortar around it did not quite match the rest in the vicinity. I pressed hard against it, but nothing happened. Putting all my weight behind the effort, I tried again and the stone began to move, the sound of scraping echoing through the tunnel. Mrs. Rillington, not wanting to get wet, had remained some distance back and now cried out in alarm. Jeremy rushed to her side, leaving me alone to see a door open.

  Its position, several feet above the floor of the tunnel, had kept most of the water out of the room into which it led. My candle in one hand, I used the other to grip the wall as best I could and climbed into the dark chamber.

  “Jeremy, stay with Mrs. Rillington,” I said, once my candle had lit the space. The floor was damp and a dark splatter of blood stained the walls. A crude table stood to one side. On top of it I found two clippings from The Times: the same article I had already read reporting the coal mine disaster in Wales that took the life of Ned Traddles and a piece lauding a factory in the East End as a model of safety and modernization.

  Now a feeling of hideous claustrophobia engulfed me. The room, no more than ten feet by twelve, felt even smaller, and I imagined I could hear the sounds of a struggle. The blood on the walls most likely belonged to Mr. Grummidge. But how had the murderer brought him to this place? I examined every square inch of the walls, my stomach roiling when I came to the bloody patches, but I could not let myself look away. And then, partway up the wall I saw a smear that looked like a handprint in the dried blood. Cringing, I pushed against the spot, and another door opened, this one three feet above the floor.

  “I’m afraid I require your assistance, Jeremy,” I called. He was at my side in an instant.

  “Bloody hell.” His voice was low and husky.
“Literally and figuratively.”

  “Boost me up so I can better see what’s beyond the door,” I said.

  “Let me go first.”

  “It’s my discovery,” I said. “And there’s no danger. If anyone was on the other side waiting for us, he would have already made his presence known.” My friend didn’t look happy about it, but he did as I instructed. The door led into another tunnel, this one steeply sloped and even narrower and wetter than the other. It went south for approximately twenty yards, ending abruptly at an archway that opened into the river, not far from Tower Bridge. We’d come further west than I had realized.

  At high tide, the arch would be completely under water, invisible from the river. The angle of the passage kept the room from flooding with water, but it would have been extremely difficult to get an unwilling person into the space. Then I remembered that Colin had told me the coroner found river water in Mr. Grummidge’s lungs. He might have been unconscious and inhaled the foul stuff when the murderer brought him here and dragged him into his little chamber, where he could finish his evil deed without being disturbed.

  I was now completely soaked and starting to shiver, but it had been necessary to poke my head out through the opening to see where, exactly, I was. That done, I retreated up the tunnel, stepping carefully on the steep, slick stones. Jeremy, who had followed me, provided a steadying hand, and we returned to the room, where I collected the newspaper clippings and then went back to Mrs. Rillington. She gasped when she saw me.

  “I must get home and warm as quickly as possible,” I said, “but not before we discover if there’s a direct way from this tunnel to Wakefield Tower.”

  “No more exploring for you,” Jeremy said. “Mrs. Rillington, please get her into a cab. I’ll send word to Park Lane as soon as I’ve finished here, Em. Hargreaves will murder me if you wind up with pneumonia.”