“Mother, my decision is already made.”
Jamie leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his temples. Too many thoughts jumbled in his head at once. The man who fathered him had been a monk. He had a new uncle. And his mother, whose opinion mattered more than he liked to admit, disapproved of his marriage choice.
Before he could get his bearings, his father gave him news of a different sort.
“We received a message from Bedford today.” His father pulled a rolled parchment with a broken seal out of his tunic and handed it to him. “The Council fears there will be riots if Parliament is held in London, so they have decided to hold the next session in Leicester.”
Since leaving Windsor, Jamie had hardly given a thought to the political strife that still threatened the country.
“So, Bedford has not yet succeeded in forcing his brother and uncle to settle their dispute?” he asked.
His father shook his head and pounded his fist on his knee. “That damned Gloucester.”
“If King Henry were alive,” his mother put in, “Gloucester would never dare cause such strife.”
“Will the Council still have the young king open Parliament?” Jamie asked.
“Aye,” his father said. “ ’Tis all the more important that the king be seen.”
Jamie tried to hold back the question, but he had to know if Linnet was headed into danger. “And the queen?”
“She is already on her way north.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
The city of Leicester was in chaos. Linnet pulled back the flap of the carriage to look out as they lurched through the crowded street that ran beside the church to the castle’s main gate. Drunken men with clubs and bats filled the streets.
“I am greatly relieved that His Grace the Duke of Bedford sent his own guard to escort us,” the queen said, her voice high with tension.
Linnet, too, was glad to be traveling today with an escort of twenty men-at-arms and royal banners flying.
“When the duke warned us there could be trouble here,” Linnet said, “I had no notion it would be as bad as this.”
“Nor I,” the queen said, clasping Linnet’s hand. “I wish Owen could have ridden inside the carriage with us.”
Linnet chose not to respond. Nothing could have been more inappropriate than to have the queen’s lowly clerk of the wardrobe travel in her carriage all the way to Leicester Castle.
Linnet and the queen were thrown against each other as the carriage rumbled and swayed over the uneven slats of the castle’s drawbridge. Without pausing, the carriage continued through the barbican and gatehouse. After crossing the expansive bailey yard at a fast clip, the carriage finally pulled up before what looked to be the castle hall.
Linnet pressed her face to the gap in the carriage cover.
“Jamie is here!” she cried out.
There he was, on the steps right before her. After longing for him every hour for the past month, she could not quite believe he was here.
He and an older knight, both in chain mail, were running down the steps two at a time, shouting to their escort and waving the carriage on. Mercy, he looked wonderful in his knightly garb, hair flying behind him, as he sprinted to the carriage.
The carriage tipped alarmingly as Jamie and the other knight leapt onto the outside of it. The carriage lurched forward, throwing Linnet against the back of the seat. Before she could grab hold of anything, she fell against the queen as the carriage careened around first one corner, and then another. Finally, it jerked to a halt.
Linnet untangled herself from the queen and attempted to straighten her headdress. Through the gap in the cover, she saw they were stopped beside a low building attached to the back of the castle hall.
The carriage door burst open, and a huge, formidable man with a hard, handsome face and fading tawny hair blocked Linnet’s view of anything behind him. It was Jamie’s father.
“Lord FitzAlan,” Linnet said. “What has happened, sir?”
He gave her a quick nod as he offered his hand to the queen. “We must make haste, Your Highness.”
FitzAlan lifted the queen down from the carriage as if she weighed no more than a rag doll. Then Jamie took his father’s place at the carriage door. He looked every inch the gallant knight come to save her, from the determined line of his jaw to the glint of the sword in his hand.
