“Thames Castle,” the younger one said. He was tall, fair-haired, with eyes the color of winter. Something about the line of his jaw suggested he was related to the older man. “You’re in the tower.”
“Locked in the tower,” the older man corrected, and there was something like satisfaction in his voice. “Until we decide what to do with you.”
“But I didn’t—” I started, then realized that no amount of protesting my innocence would matter when I couldn’t explain how I’d gotten here in the first place. “What year is it?”
Both men went very still.
“What year?” the younger one repeated slowly, as though I’d spoken in a language he recognized but couldn’t quite understand. “It’s 1215, woman. Early May. What kind of fool question is that?”
1215 May.
Confirmation of what the banner and the cross had already told me.
The Magna Carta would be signed next month.
The psalter. The light.Redire non potes.You cannot return.
I sat down on the pallet because the strength had just gone out of me, and I watched the two men’s faces harden as they realized I was either mad or hiding something, and neither option was going to make them any less likely to keep me locked in a tower.
“I need to see the psalter,” I said, very quietly. “The illuminated manuscript. If you want answers, if you want to understand where I came from, you need to show me the psalter.”
Two
GEOFFREY
England
1215
I wastwelve years old when my father decided I was better suited for strategy rather than swords, and a score and three when I discovered that no amount of tactical brilliance could compensate for a body that refused to act decisively in a crisis. That was the thought running through my head as I stood in the tower chamber, staring at the woman who’d been locked in my family’s best holding tower for three days.
She was going mad. Obviously. The London merchants who’d found her stumbling through the Thames forests, and had the good sense to bring her directly to the castle rather than let her wander about, had said she spoke in tongues, of impossible things. And I had thought, reasonably enough, that she was either a spy, infected with some fever-madness, or both.
But spies didn’t ask to see psalters. And fever-dreams didn’t manifest in people whose eyes were clear and direct though her clothing was most odd indeed.
“Show her the manuscript,” I said, even as my older brother Aldwin, who was supposed to inherit, and who should be making these decisions, looked at me like I’d suggested burning the keep down.
“Absolutely not,” Aldwin snapped. “She’s a prisoner.”
“She’s a woman in a tower who’s asked for one thing in three days,” I replied, keeping my tone level. “If she’s a spy, the psalter will prove it. If she’s not?—”
“Then we’ve indulged madness.”
“Better to indulge it than to leave her untested.”
I pushed past my brother, moving down the spiral stairs before he could countermand me. The manuscript was kept in the family chapel, a treasure our grandfather had acquired on crusade. Worthless in terms of monetary value, too damaged by damp to sell, but precious in the way old objects were precious.
I found her standing at the window when I returned, her back to the door, her shoulders held in a posture that suggested she was trying very hard not to break down. She turned as I entered, and I saw the calculation in her eyes shift.
“The psalter,” she said, stepping toward me.
I wasn’t prepared for her to move so quickly, with that combination of purpose and desperation. I stepped back without thinking about it, which meant I looked cowardly in front of a woman I’d had locked in a tower. I regretted the movement immediately.
“Don’t touch it,” I said, extending the manuscript at arm’s length while keeping it firmly in my own hands. “Just look.”
Her eyes widened as she saw the binding. Some emotion crossed her face, recognition perhaps, or grief, and she extended one hand before stopping herself, curling her fingers into a fist.
“Open it,” she whispered. “Open to the psalm pages. The ones with the margins.”
