Chapter 2
Her maidservant cast worried eyes on the deep stone archway under which they passed from the boat that had brought them along the Thames to the Tower. It had to be nine or ten ells thick. Margaret thought the Tower’s walls must be able to withstand musket and cannon fire for weeks’ worth of bombardment, and the mighty keep that rose foursquare above them was also powerfully constructed. Those within were safe as a chick in the egg, though so many of them had no choice in the matter.
“Madam, is this right?” Hettie whispered, as they followed the stout man in the scarlet livery and flat black hat, the Yeoman Warder who had taken Margaret’s small offering with a sideways glance to make sure no one had observed them. “Should we be in tha’ castle? Will they let us out again? Should we ha’ brought Percy with us?”
Margaret eyed their guide. It was not lost on her that under the ornate red-and-black tunic, the Warder was fully armored and carried a fearsome halberd with the air of one who knew how to use it. Her only defense beside her wits was a short but sharp knife concealed in a scabbard in her garter. She’d scarcely be able to fight her way out with that. Neither would the man who had acted as their escort from Barlaston. Percy was the son of the head grounds keeper, he was supposed to be an apprentice weaver, but since his master had been crippled a few years ago he spent more time assisting his father. He was big and strong, to be sure, but no fighter. They’d left him at a pub just outwith the walls with a coin or two.
“We will be able to go away again,” she said. “We’ve done no wrong. And our guide here would not keep you, at all, since it is by my order that you accompany me.”
Hettie clutched Margaret’s cloak. “I would not leave you, madam! I would stay, no matter what foul dungeon they plunged us into!”
Margaret patted the young woman’s arm.
“All will be well.”
She didn’t feel as calm as she looked. Such a practice of going to see those who lived in the Tower, for one reason or another, was common enough, or so she was told, but the place, once a royal palace, was still a fortress. Executions had been done here, including taking the sacred lives of two queens. Her knees quivered. If she was trapped here, how would she fare?
Her misgivings gave way to calm as they passed through the Thomas Gate and into the greensward at the heart of the keep. Other curiosity-seekers, almost all of them men in fashionable dress with tall walking sticks, strolled about, looking up at the forbidding stone walls at the small glass windows of the residences.
“It don’t look like a prison,” Hettie said in a low voice. “Not as such.”
“Your destination is here, my lady,” the Yeoman Warder said, stopping beside a low doorway with a pointed stone arch. He had a kind face, and the humor in his eyes told Margaret he had heard everything that she and Hettie had said. His voice was thick with a Lancastrian accent, not many miles from where the two of them had come. “I shall inquire if the guests within wish to receive you.” His free hand, the one not holding the halberd, turned up slightly to reveal the palm. Margaret took his meaning at once and reached for her purse. The Warder glanced away as she put a coin into his hand. He ducked under the archway and mounted the narrow stone stairs beyond.
Margaret waited with stretched nerves until he returned.
“They cry your pardon for a few minutes’ grace, until they can make themselves presentable to such distinguished visitors,” the Warder said. He spread his feet to shoulder’s width and put the butt of the halberd on the ground, and stared across the green like a statue, until they heard a short but incomprehensible call from above. Margaret and Hettie looked up.
“All right, then,” the Warder said. He tilted his head toward the stone stairs. Margaret grasped Hettie’s hand and pulled her forward.
They mounted to the first floor, where the Warder stood to one side next to a heavy wooden door bounded by iron straps.
“I’ll be searching your reticules and pockets on the way out again,” he said, solemn-faced. “In case you want to smuggle one of them out.”
Hettie looked horrified, but Margaret stifled a giggle. The man was kind and had a sense of humor. She liked him despite his fearsome appearance.
“Well, come in already!” A tall, narrow-faced woman opened the door. She had a strangely nasal voice, albeit not unpleasant.
“Lady Mailey, this is the Honorable Miss Margaret de Beauchamp,” the Warder announced in formal tones.
Lady Mailey took Margaret by the hand and pumped it warmly.
“Very nice to meet you. Thank you, Andrew.”
The uniformed man touched the brim of his black hat. “My lady.” He stumped down the narrow spiral staircase, leaving Margaret standing shyly on the threshold.
Lady Mailey gave her a sharp look.
“Well, don’t stand there letting the flies in. Come in! You, too,” she said, when Hettie held back. “Where are you from?”
“We come from Barlaston, near Stoke-on-Trent,” Margaret said, following her hostess into a small sitting room, rendered even smaller by the large number of cases and boxes that crowded the furniture. A woman dressed in blue, who appeared just a few years older than Margaret, rose and smiled when she entered. She was of a surprising height, and her teeth were marvelously white and straight, like an angel’s. Through a door to the right, a big man crouched over a table, his hands busy. She couldn’t really see what he was doing, but as soon as he noticed her scrutiny, he rose and closed the door between them. Before it shut, Margaret thought she saw two or three other people in the room. “My father’s estate lies to the south of town.”
The young woman smiled and extended her hand to both Margaret and Hettie. She had a firm, friendly grip.
“It must have taken you days to get here!” she said.
“Only four,” Margaret said, proudly. “We came by fast coach most of the way, to the eternal detriment of my spine, until we could come to a barge that brought us the rest of the way east along the Thames. The tolls cost more than the road journey, alas. Four pounds! But our coaches made good time. The roads were not too wet. I thought that we might come afoul a few times when we struck some deep ruts, but good folk nearby helped us out.”
“I noticed that the English roads are pretty poor anywhere but the city here,” the young woman said. “We’ve been used to better in Grantville. Oh, I’m Rita Stearns Simpson. My brother Mike is president of the United States of Europe. I’m the ambassador from the USE to England.”
“Your Excellency!” Margaret hastily dropped into a curtsey, spreading her skirts out with both hands. Hettie followed suit, crouching deeper than her mistress.
“Oh, stop it!” Rita said with a laugh, taking Margaret by the arm again and escorting her to one of the settees. She gestured Hettie to a stool beside the small table. The servant perched herself on the seat with her back as straight as a rail. “I’m not noble at all. I’m just a girl from a small town in West Virginia. It’s Melissa who’s the important one here.”
“You stop it,” Lady Mailey said, with a look that shut both Rita’s and Margaret’s lips at once. “Don’t scare the poor girl into running away. We get few enough visitors as it is. What brings you here, Margaret?”
The visitors’ expressions were so friendly that Margaret felt she could be frank.
“Curiosity, madam,” she admitted. “I had heard you were from…from the future. I wanted…I expected…?”
“That we’d have two heads apiece and speak in tongues?” Lady Mailey retorted, but her eyes were full of humor.
“Perhaps that you would look different than we do,” Margaret said.
“And do we?”
Margaret studied the two women. “You look…healthier than most. I believe that you might be of an age with my mother, Lady Mailey, but time’s been kinder to you.”
“Superior nutrition,” Lady Mailey said at once, ignoring Rita’s broad grin. “Hygiene, childhood vaccinations, and nutrition. We’ve been trying to educate people to improve conditions in Thuringia, where our town landed, during what more sensationalistic people have named the Ring of Fire. It’s appalling the way people in this era feed and care for themselves. Even the wealthy waste their resources, as scanty as they are. I believe that we are already making a difference in the lives of ordinary people.”
“In education, too,” Rita added. “Melissa has been spearheading that. People are hungry to learn.”
Margaret found herself delighted by the energy and intelligence of her new acquaintances. Such a difference from the plodding folk who minded the estate’s sheep and produced the wares from their backs. While she and all her siblings had been tutored by Dr. Angelus, an Oxford University graduate, only her younger brother Nat had gone on to university, at New College. In time, he was meant to succeed their old dean in the church. For the rest of them, a higher education was deemed unnecessary. Angelus introduced them to Greek and Latin, poetry and art, but complicated essays and analyses were less important than reading, writing and figuring. Margaret prided herself on being able to sweep her eyes down a list of numbers and adding them rapidly in her head, but always wanted to know more.
“What subjects do you teach them? I have a hunger to learn.”
“Oh, now you have opened the floodgates!” Rita said, with a grin.
Lady Mailey smiled. “I’d have to do an assessment of what you already know, child. I want to fill in the blanks. Generally speaking, we start with basic literacy and health matters, and expand outward, depending on aptitude and attitude. Literature, art, philosophy, history—although the history as we knew it is being altered every day—practical skills, medicine, chemistry, physics, and biology, to name a few.” She tilted her head and eyed Margaret. “You liked school, didn’t you?”
“I had a tutor, but I wished that I could have attended university,” Margaret said. Before she knew it, she had burst out with her history and that of her siblings. How, now that her first brother had passed away and the brother a year younger than she had become a merchant, she had been groomed to take over the wool production from her father, carrying on a tradition that had been in her family for centuries. Margaret’s father’s lands were part of a parcel detached from the Duchy of Lancaster by its duke in the fifteenth century, as a gift for having been of “significant service to his lordship in matters of advice and finance,” thus raising a family of merchants to producers, when the situation was usually reversed. It was a great responsibility for which she wasn’t at all sure she was equal, yet she vowed to undertake it with good will.
Her two hostesses listened attentively. She realized after she paused to take a deep breath that she had been filling their ears for a solid quarter of an hour without stopping. “I apologize, truly. I’ve been talking about myself when I want to know all about you! Is it true that a thousand of you have arrived from the future by magic, bringing astonishing philosophical devices with you?”
Rita laughed. “That’s true,” she said. “We don’t have much in the way of those with us here, but over in Grantville you’d see things that you’ve never seen before. We’re trying to better the lives of the people around us. It’s something that we can offer other countries. I’m here to establish friendly relations with the king of England.” Her expression turned rueful. “He doesn’t seem in a big hurry to meet us.”
“He is no doubt in mourning for Her Majesty,” Margaret said, sadly. “I regret having to make the journey during this tragic time, but I had no choice.”
“Well, it must be a good reason, if you had to make an eight-day round trip.”
“Our fortunes are tied up in the wool trade,” Margaret said. “Father keeps large flocks, and our estates spin and weave the fleeces into cloth for sale within England and overseas. His Majesty makes ever heavier demands upon every stage of the process. My father needs respite from all of the taxes due this year, or we may have to sell assets that have been in our families for centuries. Fields, manors, flocks, the wherewithal of the shearers, spinners, weavers, and dyers, all are required. If one must be sacrificed, the whole may collapse with its lack. I…” Margaret fell quiet. She didn’t want to criticize the rapaciousness of the Crown, taking all it could from those who were not in a position to argue because their chief customer was also their liege lord. Every sack of wool had a levy placed on it, as had been custom for the last three hundred years. It supported Their Majesties and their various overseas wars, not to mention the heavy costs of maintaining castles and court. She raised her hands and noticed they were shaking. She put them down again in her lap. “…I hope his lordship will hear my appeal and be generous.”
Lady Mailey patted her shoulder.
“I haven’t had the pleasure of the man’s acquaintance, but a few friends of ours have had some run-ins with him. Since what you do benefits the crown directly and doesn’t challenge his authority, I hope he’ll be better to you than he was to them.”
“I’m impressed that she came all this way alone to talk to the king,” Rita said. “Your dad trusts you to negotiate on his behalf? He didn’t send one of your brothers instead?”
Margaret dropped her eyes. “My elder brother Julian was meant to be the heir to the business, but he died of the fever two years ago. His loss struck our family so hard. I stepped in to support my father in his place. I have done my best to learn all I can.”
Rita put a gentle hand on Margaret’s knee. “I’m so sorry. But I admire your dad for considering you to take over. You both sound pretty extraordinary. It can’t be easy, being a woman in authority in this day and age. I’m a nurse, and just getting men to listen to me is tough. Even though they need what I have to tell them.”
“That is so true,” Margaret said with a laugh. “I have to use half the words and twice the tact of any man.” Rita’s eyes twinkled. “I’d back you in a deal in a minute. I bet you can bring success to your dad’s business.”
Margaret felt oddly cheered by her kind words. She liked these Americans a great deal, and regretted that their acquaintance would be so brief. In time, she felt she and Rita would become close friends. Lady Ann would like them, too.
“I should feel hope. My brother James’s success as a merchant at trade has turned the tide for us in the last few years, but our debts are becoming more than can be encompassed. He has had his profits much curtailed by the barricades to the Germanies and Holland. He has had respectful dealings with the East India Trading Company, but the manufacturers in the European provinces are beginning to steal our customers altogether. I don’t know what we will do if it continues. We could be left with bolt upon bolt of fine cloth, and nowhere to sell it.”
“Yours won’t be the first industry to be overwhelmed in that way,” Lady Mailey said, thoughtfully. “I haven’t had much time to read up on the wool trade in detail, though I believe there is at least one fine text on it in the Grantville library…”
“I would love to read that book,” Margaret said, enchanted. To think that the future history of her family’s trade existed! And not so far away as three and a half centuries hence, but only at a physical distance, in the Germanies. Although, at that moment, that seemed as distant as the moon herself. If only the trade embargoes and wars would cease enough to let her through to it as a mere traveler! She sighed.
Lady Mailey smiled. “I hope that you will get the chance, my dear.”
“Thank you, madam,” Margaret said. “I…suppose that you shall be departing as soon as you may once you have your audience with His Majesty?”
“We’re prisoners, actually,” Rita said. At Margaret’s horrified look, the girl waved a casual hand. “Detained at His Majesty’s pleasure. It almost sounds nice when they say it like that. And you know, they have been mighty nice to us. The rooms are kind of small here in the Tower, but they’re pretty comfortable. And warm. I live in the mountains—or I did—but our houses are a lot better insulated than yours. Castles are cold!”
“You will hear no argument from my quarter,” Margaret said fervently. “Our manor house is as cold and creaky as a dotard, with leaks and squeaks, letting in every gust that passes.”
The girl laughed with delight. “And they said Shakespeare’s dead! You’re a poet.”
Margaret felt her cheeks burn.
“Nay. Just the mistress of shepherds, weavers and potters, hoping the king’s ear and heart are open.” She glanced down at the girl’s dress. The weft was dark blue, the same as the sky’s reflection in a peat pool, but with white or particolored threads twisted in the warp. “What an unusual weave.”
“I don’t know anything about weaving, really,” Rita said. “It’s kind of ordinary where I come from. It’s called denim. A couple of the ladies back home sewed it together for me out of a lot of old blue jeans. Tough wearing, but fashionable.”
“Those two terms are not often combined in my world,” Margaret said. “Hard wearing is for work, and fashion is too delicate to last.” She examined it closely, with an eye trained by guildsmen who had been at pains since her childhood to make certain that she understood the excellence of their work. With the young woman’s permission, she rubbed the cloth between thumb and forefinger. It draped into handsome, heavy folds that would have been the delight of the great artists, yet it felt as strong as tweed, but soft, not catching on her skin at all. “Most interesting. The fineness of the fabric is like unto the silk makers here in London! This must be the work of master weavers who have spent their lives improving their craft!”
“Probably some kid in China running a power loom,” the young woman said, with a wry expression.
Margaret didn’t know what to make of such a comment. She had heard that the people of the United States had strange, casual ways about them, and had seen marvels that not even Good Queen Elizabeth’s Magister John Dee could have imagined. Questions knocked at her lips, but she had already stretched the boundaries of good behavior.
“Forgive me, but we have taken too much of your time. We had better go.” She rose.
Hettie, who had listened in silence with wide eyes all that time, cleared her throat meaningfully. Margaret shot her a look of reproach.
Her hosts noticed the maidservant’s expression.
“What do you need, child?” Lady Mailey asked. At Hettie’s hesitation, she turned the half-stern look upon her. “Speak up! We’re not going to eat your entrails.”
Instead of replying to her directly, Hettie turned to her employer. “They’re well-spoken enough, madam, but they could be anybody!”
Margaret felt her cheeks burn even more fiercely. Over the course of their brief acquaintance, she had come to believe wholeheartedly in the Americans, but Hettie was right: they were wonderful spinners of tales, but hadn’t produced anything that would prove their claims to have come from the future. Fortunately, Rita Simpson understood.
“We haven’t vouchsafed you a miracle, is that it?” she asked. She rummaged around in a nearby chest and came up with a tiny, rectangular black box with what looked like a shining sequin on the end. “Here, take this. Don’t use it too often, because the battery will wear out, and we don’t have replacements. Yet. And don’t show it to anyone you don’t absolutely trust, because we’re not the most popular people in these parts.”
She held out the device and pressed on it with her thumb.
A beam of light shot out of the sequin, like a bolt of sunlight from heaven in the dim room, and drew a perfect circle of white on the far wall. Hettie let out a little scream and covered her eyes. Margaret just stared in growing delight.
“It’s an LED flashlight,” Rita said. “I think I got it as a gift from our insurance agent.”
“It must be worth a fortune!” Margaret exclaimed.
“Nope, it was free. He wanted our business.” She dangled it from a sinuous metal tether and dropped it into Margaret’s palm.
“Thank you, my lady!” Margaret said, clutching the prize in both hands.
“Tuck it away,” Lady Mailey said, as shuffling and clanking erupted from beyond the door. “I think I hear the warder coming up the stairs. He always makes plenty of noise so we can greet him without embarrassing ourselves.” Margaret obeyed, putting the small square in her reticule. She couldn’t wait to get back to the privacy of their rooms and experiment with the flashlight.
“Come along, Hettie,” she said, and offered a curtsey to her hosts. “Lady Mailey, Lady Rita, it has been a true pleasure to make your acquaintance. Thank you for the gift. I promise I will keep it a secret.”
“Come again soon,” Rita said. “We’re not going anywhere. For a while.”
Margaret beamed as the warder appeared on the threshold. “It would be my honor.”
“The pleasure is all ours,” Lady Mailey said, with a smile.
* * *
“Harry, come in,” Tom Simpson said, leaning over the microphone of the small radio set. “Dammit, Harry, where are you?” Gayle Mason tweaked the dials a little, and the static lessened.
Rita held the antenna dish in the open window, shading it from view from below with a fold of her cloak. When she noticed anyone looking up at her from the river walk, she smiled down at them. Most of the time, the passersby looked bemused and dropped their gaze. A few stared openly. Rita shook her head. Just a lady getting a breath of air on a cold spring night, she thought.
On the table, the speaker crackled.
“That’s Agent X-13 to you,” Harry Lefferts’ voice brayed from the round black disk. “Besides, you were supposed to say ‘Open Channel D.’ Didn’t you write that down?”
“I haven’t got that much paper in here,” Tom said. Melissa, sitting beside him on a wooden stool, rolled her eyes, and Rita grinned. “And I’m not going to waste it on keeping track of your spy-guy aliases. One of these days Cork is going to order a search in here, and I don’t want anything written down that he can use against us. How are you doing at getting us out of here?”
“Operation Spring-Time?” Harry asked. “I’m working on it. We’re making progress.”
Tom glanced up to Rita. She scanned the river. In the growing gloom of the evening, she saw dark figures of people passing along the opposite bank of the Thames. On the water itself, sturdy boatmen ferried customers up and down in small boats each illuminated by the globe of light from a single lantern. It was so quiet that she could hear the conversation of the passengers. She shook her head. No one was close enough to overhear anything.
“Do we have a timetable? Things are getting worse here. Wentworth took being locked up like a man, but Cork can hardly leave him or Cromwell alive for long. He’s read the history. I don’t hold out a lot of hope for our safety, either.”
“You can count on me,” Harry said, with his usual brash confidence. “You know it. If I have to go charging in there by myself, guns blazing, I’ll get you out. But that’s pretty ordinary. I’m working on something spectacular, and spectacular takes time.”
“Can we pull back to something merely stupendous that makes use of a shorter timetable?” Melissa asked. “I’d like to get home sooner rather than later.”
An appreciable pause filled with static made Rita wonder if the radio had stopped working on Harry’s end. “I’m working on it. I don’t have the connections here that we’ve got in Germany. Juliet and George are trying to fill in two gaps. I can get you out, but away is taking more time. I need the right people and the right equipment.”
“What kind of people?”
“People with tight lips. And boats. And at least two wagons. We’ll get there. Sherrilyn just got back. I need to see if she found what we’re looking for. Tomorrow, same time?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Got it. X-13 out.”