VIII

light of the warders’ torches getting brighter as they approach on the other side. Chains rattle and massive bolts screech and scrape as they’re drawn back – and scrape again as they’re shot home behind us.
    No one can harm us here , my mother said. I believe her. How can this place ever be captured? My mother doesn’t say anything now, but somehow I know she is getting happier with each gate we pass through.
    At the fifth, as we wait again for a portcullis to be raised, I hear a hoarse croaking of birds and look up. Large black shapes wheel against the lightening sky.
    And then suddenly the skin on the back of my neck prickles. It’s like an animal instinct: I feel that I’m being watched. Not by my mother, not by the guards – by someone else.
    Above the pointed centre of the gateway’s arch there’s a window. Before I’ve properly looked at it, as my gaze slides down from the birds to the building, I think I glimpse something: the smudge of a pale face moving – a white oval against the lattice. By the time I’m looking at the window directly, it’s gone.
    The portcullis is up and the horses begin to move, their clopping footsteps echoing as we pass under the gateway’s vaulted roof. I feel stiff from gripping the saddle so hard and I’m juddering with whole-body shivers now, which makes it hard to keep my balance.
    It’s not just the cold that’s making me shiver. A scary thought has come into my head: what if the danger isn’t outside after all? What if there is something inside, waiting for me to arrive? And the bolts screeching home behind me are shutting me in with it ?

 
♦  ♦  ♦  II   ♦  ♦  ♦
     
     
    “For the love of God, have someone dress the boy, Elizabeth. He looks like a peasant.”
    I don’t like to be called a peasant, even by my own grandmother. And anyway it’s not true. What peasant wears a sable-lined blanket with embroidered velvet slippers? (Even if the slippers are much too large – a groom just found them for me.) I scowl down at my fist. I’m trying to pick a bit of dried food out of my garnet ring.
    “Don’t fidget,” my mother whispers, rubbing my hair.
    We’re deep in the heart of the Tower. We’ve come through so many gates, it feels like the centre of a maze. I’m surprised: I thought it might feel like a prison, but the hall we’re standing in isn’t grim and bare – it’s very like the hall at Eltham Palace, which is the place I call home. A fire is blazing in the huge hearth and friendly faded ladies and knights ripple at me gently from the painted hangings on the walls. I have pushed all thoughts of eerie faces from my mind. I would like something to drink. The only thing making me feel uncomfortable is the fact that my grandmother is here. She must have set off from The Coldharbour too: how she got here first, though, I have no idea.
    Servants are rushing about, carrying candles, piles of linen, trestle tables and benches. My grandmother stands in the middle of all this commotion, her yellowish face edged by a white wimple, her bony hands resting on her plain black gown. She dresses like a nun, but you do not forget for a moment she is the mother of the king. She has a manner you could graze yourself on.
    I know that I must not show my grandmother how much she scares me. She’s like my father: she will kick a dog if it whimpers; if you show fear, she’ll look at you as if you’re a piece of maggoty meat. Tudors aren’t afraid. It’s my mother’s family that are weak and tearful and full of foolish feeling. I’ve heard my grandmother say that my mother’s parents married for love. She says it like she’s picking up a dirty, stinking rag. I think it means: no wonder your mother is so soft, no wonder she hugs you and kisses you and treats you like a baby.
    My mother gathers me in now against her skirts. She says, “Have you heard any news, ma’am? Are the rebels at the City gates? At the bridge? Are they south of the river or north?”
    “They are not at the gates,” says my grandmother. “The report that they were so close to London has turned out to be a false alarm. We have been informed that they are still thirty miles away.” A passing pageboy is holding down the top of a huge pile of napkins with his chin. In one smooth movement she stops him, whisks the top cloth off the pile, yanks his arms out in front of him and cuffs him across the head.
    I wince, as if she’s hit me too.
    As the boy rushes past, his