She followed my train of thought. “Bridget, come now. Those women brought their punishments upon themselves. They said so from their own lips. This is the title of Queen of England that hangs in the balance. I have a sneaking suspicion you have it; you just don’t know it yet.”
You have no idea just how much I know.
I pushed up from the cold bench and swiped at my eyes with the back of my hand. A few threads snapped, unwilling to be released from the ancient bark. “No Cousin. You’re wrong.” I glanced over my shoulder.
Now I am the hare. And the bloodhounds are coming.
The drawbridge led into the Royal Forest. “No matter who was chosen today as the next Queen of England—” I looked back at my cousin, sitting on the stone bench, eyes wide and fearful. “It shall not be me.”
“Bridget!” Elizabeth’s scolding voice sounded much like Aunt Lady Denny’s. Of course, she who was left to care for me was much too interested in her own popularity at Court to be bothered with the likes of her daughter or her orphaned niece, no matter how much they needed her.
I lifted my skirts and turned toward the drawbridge. Without bothering to say goodbye, I dashed toward my only chance at freedom.
“Bridget, stop!”
I didn’t stop until I reached the downed drawbridge. I glanced through the opening and spotted the guard. He’d placed his back in a corner so as to give the illusion of attentiveness. I stared for a moment. Watching. Praying. Sure enough, his head nodded a few times and then dipped low to his chest.
Elizabeth’s voice was a hiss along the night breezes. “Bridget! You’ll be killed for this. As will I!”
These woods surrounding the castle are deep and dark. Surely they hold many secrets. Perhaps there is room for one more. Without looking back or thinking too incredibly far into the future, I slipped into the dark cover of the royal forest.
The King’s Forest
B
ranches tore at my hair and dress as I ran. My chest heaved against the impossible whale-bone corset. His Majesty and all his men are out in these very woods. Should they find me—
The swift chop of the headsman’s axe echoed in my skull. I kicked out of my azure slippers and ran faster beneath the deep canopy.
Sounds of the night creatures amplified as I struggled to catch my breath. Images of Henry and his gleaming brown eye, peering at me from behind every tree trunk, faded until he became a wild boar, largest in the whole of England, running for his life, crashing through the understory.
Tears streamed down my cheeks and I leaned against the trunk of an ivy-encased trunk. The darkness was almost tangible, and I was certain that brown eye was out there. Staring at me from the deep black. Watching. Waiting. Lusting.
Somewhere nearby, a dog barked.
His Majesty has discovered my absence and set the dogs after me.
I pushed off like a sprinter and dashed blindly through the wilds. I didn’t care where I wound up, just so long as it was nowhere near Henry or the castle. My jagged breath clawed at my throat as I refused to give in to the sharp pains that stabbed my sides, or the misbegotten roots and rocks that jabbed at my stockinged feet.
Finally, I slowed as I entered a clearing, illuminated by the moonlight, through the sudden parting of leaves.
Is that a light?
I rubbed my bleary eyes and willed my breathing to slow. My heart thundered in my ears as the tiny stone cottage, built into side of a small knoll, came into focus before me. Just as I thought, a lone candle lit the front window.
In the distance, it came again. Sharp. Like a slap to a cold cheek. Another dog bark.
I chewed my lower lip and rushed the door. My quivering fingers rapped the ancient wood in staccato succession. And waited.
Nothing.
I knocked again, louder this time, and pressed my ear to the wooden slats.
The door creaked inward.
Without bothering with a second time-consuming thought, I stepped inside. My heartbeat pulsed in my ears as I pushed the heavy door shut behind me. I leaned against it, eyes closed. In this moment, I was safe. Safe from the wild boar. Safe from the bloodhounds. Safe from the peeping brown eye.
At least for now.
I opened my eyes and dared a peek around my new surroundings. A roughhewn chair sat before a crooked hearth, and a candle flickered in the only window. Across the way, a door set partially open to what was probably somebody’s sleeping quarters. A black kettle hung in the fireplace that had long grown cold. Above the mantle hung a gleaming, familiar object. “Surely not.”
I rubbed my eyes.
“Surely not,” I whispered again. As much as I wished they had, my eyes had not deceived me. A double headed axe hung above the fireplace.
My breath caught in my throat as I stepped to the middle of the quaint cottage, not wanting to remember where I’d seen that axe before. I turned slowly and prayed for any sign of the cottage’s owner. Perhaps a simple parkkeeper and his wife. Anyone, so as long as the owner wasn’t—
Then, there it was. On the middle roof timber. The tell-tale brown hooded mask, hanging innocently enough.
Blood drained from my face, and my knees began to shake. I smoothed wildly at my hair and chewed my lip. “I’ve gone from the coliseum stadium into the lion’s den.”
The scraping of the door along the dirt floor made me jump. Before I could find a place to hide, a shirtless man wearing only britches stepped inside. Droplets of water dotted his chest and hung like diamonds from his damp, black locks. Freshly scrubbed, his muscular arms shone in the glow of candlelight as he rubbed his glistening hair with a cloth.
I swallowed hard as the shirtless man froze in the doorway and his ice blue eyes met mine. Again.
I recognized him at once, even without his brown hooded mask. With all the luck of a condemned man who escaped the gallows only to find himself in the torture chamber, I’d found my way into the quarters of His Majesty’s private executioner.
My fingers searched the stone wall behind me.
