Emlyn stood and moved toward the windowsill. Reaching for the stone slabs beneath the lead-lined glass, she shifted one from side to side, loosening it. They had discovered the weakness around the stone on their first day in the chamber, and sensing the potential, they had used smaller stones to wear away the remaining mortar that held it in place. Emlyn now lifted the slab, revealing the gap beneath where they had already hidden the jewels that they had taken earlier in the week.
Gwynnie stood to peer into the gap. The other jewels were wrapped in linen and wool.
“Find me something to bind them,” Emlyn whispered as she gathered the jewels from Fitzroy’s chamber together.
Reaching into a leather bag, Gwynnie pulled out a strip of linen once used for stockings. Together, they put the jewels in the linen. Gwynnie paused when she found the Celtic brooch.
In daylight, she could see the silver was rather dulled, and the pin on the back was broken.
“Quickly,” Emlyn urged.
Gwynnie dropped the brooch into the linen with the others, allowing Emlyn to place the jewels into their hiding place and return the slab.
“There, it is done,” Emlyn said, stepping back with a satisfied smile. “So we have our plan.”
“Plan?” Gwynnie shook her head. “Oh yes, a grand plan it is too. Let us just continue working here under the same roof as a murderer.”
“Your sarcasm isn’t helping, miting.”
“No? You think not? Because it is cheering me up no end!” Her outburst merely made Emlyn raise her eyebrows. “God’s blood, Ma, we cannot simply hide here and hope for the best.”
“That cursing tongue of yours —”
“I got it from somewhere —”
“Not from me —”
“Then from Pa.” Her pointed words made Emlyn look away.
“Neither can we flee with the water the way it is,” she said with a sigh. “No, for now, we act out our parts and we stay the course. Remember what I told you?” Emlyn looked at her. “Where is the best place to hide?”
“In front of another’s eyes. As if you are not hiding at all,” Gwynnie muttered angrily as she stood and moved toward a small looking glass that hung from the whitewashed wall. In the glass, she half expected to see someone different.
It felt as if the last night had changed everything, that perhaps she would no longer see her own small face when she looked in the mirror, but that of someone else entirely. A woman with a black heart that would stand and do nothing when a man was fighting for his life. Was that not who she was now?
Suddenly nauseous, she stepped back from the mirror and gagged. Emlyn reached for a chamber pot and thrust it under her nose. Gwynnie bent over it as Emlyn held back her hair.
“Ah, miting.” Emlyn rubbed her back. “It is what the sight of death does to us all.”
Gwynnie’s stomach knotted further at her mother’s words. She knew Emlyn had seen death, but being reminded of it was never easy.
“Come, there now.” Emlyn offered a handkerchief for Gwynnie to wipe her mouth. “If we are to keep you hidden from these men, then we must get to work. We must hide in full view.”
“They’ve struck again. It was them. The Shadow Cutpurses. They were here again last night.”
“Be quiet, boy.”
The stable boy’s loud shouts were quelled by a sharp flick to his ear by the stable master.
Gwynnie glanced their way as she and Emlyn exited the wood store beside the stables, each carrying a pail of firewood.
“Keep your head down,” Emlyn whispered as she strode across the puddle-filled grass toward the main palace. They passed Friars’ Church on their right and hastened through Friars’ Garden.
Gwynnie followed behind her, watching as many of the staff gathered to hear what the stable boy had to say. Maids tittered, pulling coifs around their ears as they whispered to one another. Gwynnie strained to hear some of their conversation as she passed by.
“They’re not real,” one whispered to another.
“They are,” a second insisted. “My Ma says they did all the fine houses on the east coast last year. No house was left untouched.”
“That cannot be true. They would be as rich as the king if it were.”
“Why come here? Why steal from the palace?”
“Why not?” Emlyn whispered to Gwynnie as they walked on through an archway and into the main inner court. “Because we can.”
“Ma.” Gwynnie elbowed her mother. “You said we came so we could be done with this life.” Her stomach knotted when she noticed Emlyn avoiding her gaze, suddenly seeming busy with the pail of firewood. “That was the deal, was it not? One last theft, then we were to be done.”
“Yes, it was.” Yet Emlyn walked on faster and Gwynnie trailed behind her, frowning. The plan had always been that the Palace of Placentia was to be their last job, before there were any more pamphlets about the Shadow Cutpurses taking wild guesses as to their identities.
The latest pamphlet had illustrated them as two men clad in black, moving like bats across rooftops. That particular image had made Emlyn laugh for hours as Gwynnie glared at the picture, wondering where the people got their ideas from.
“Stay calm,” Emlyn whispered as they walked through the courtyard. “If anyone mentions them again, do not respond.”
The flooding had receded a little from the night before, but with the morning had come a greater chill. In patches across the courtyard, the puddles had frozen to thick trenches of ice. The fine ladies and gentlemen that had come out to take the air kept slipping in their court shoes and boots, squealing like suckling pigs and clinging onto one another’s arms.
“It was them. Did you not hear?” one man cried from a group of professional gentlemen nearby. Some wore the black robes of the lawyers, others the red cowls of the high clergy and the bishops. “They have stolen from the Duke of Richmond, Henry Fitzroy. All of his jewels were taken in the night.”
Gwynnie’s pace slowed until Emlyn bumped her arm with the wooden pail.
