“Oh,” said Eleanor, raising her chin again. “Next time someone asks you, you silly girl, tell people she fainted and needs her rest. Tell them she will be well by morning, yes?”

“Yes, my lady,” the girl said, dipping and bowing her head, then retreating into the room.

Eleanor looked at me. “Good. That was easier than I thought. Now go do whatever it is you must do—the less I know the better, I imagine.”

I brought David and Allan into the room with me. Rob were already there, and he stood as I came in.

“Well?” he asked.

“Winchester and Margaret ran off,” I told him.

His face broke into a grin. “What? Really?”

I nodded. “And we need to do this tonight. Eleanor put the chests in place, just as I asked. Her carriage is full of them and waiting in the courtyard.”

He drew a breath. “Very well. David, Allan, get horses and meet us by the carriage.”

David glanced at me, ever loyal, and I nodded once.

They had just bare left when a knock came to the door.

Our maid opened it and announced Essex. Rob bristled as Essex came into the room, coming straight for me. His cheeks were filled with color and bright, and he looked wild.

“Is it true?” he asked. “Everything you hinted at—is Prince John a traitor?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “We’ll find out soon enough. Why? What’s the matter?”

“He struck her,” he growled, and Rob came closer to me. “He struck her and he’s going to annul their marriage.”

“What?” Rob said.

“Isabel?” I asked.

“You’d think pain would count more than children,” he said. “But it doesn’t. He tortures her and she has yet to give him a child, so he will annul their marriage and marry Isabelle of Angouleme.”

My breath caught. “Good Lord. The knights—they’re her men.”

“What knights?”

“The prince put the ransom in the White Tower. The men guarding it are French knights—he claims they’re from Aquitaine, but they can’t be.”

He nodded. “That must have been what Isabel meant.” He looked at me. “Please tell me you have some scheme to stop this, Marian. John Lackland will purchase a crown with his new wife’s money. Isabel said he told her himself he’s planning on sending the money to France to make sure Richard never returns.”

Rob crossed his arms. “Scarlet. Her name is Scarlet,” he snapped. He shrugged his shoulders at me. “I can’t stand hearing that name on everyone’s mouth.”

“My name doesn’t matter,” I told him. “What they call me, the words I use—they don’t matter. Our actions, and what we will do to bring the King of England home matter.” I looked at Essex. “So yes, I have a plan.”

Chapter 31

“I look terrible in this,” Allan whined.

David scowled at him. “The great trickster. I thought you could pretend to be whatever you wanted. Having difficulty pretending to be me?”

“But I look so much handsomer as me,” Allan said.

I frowned at them from the carriage seat. “You’d make a terrible knight, Allan. Try to look intimidating.”

“David’s not intimidating,” Allan said, looking at David on his horse.

“Be thankful you haven’t seen that side of me yet, Allan,” David grunted.

The gates round the White Tower came into view, and David rode forward to trot abreast of the carriage with Rob and me on the coachman’s seat. The French guards came out to greet us, looking wary.

“Open the gate,” David ordered.

“On what business?”

“We have contributions from the queen for the king’s ransom,” David said.

They opened the gate.

There were more knights now; at least thirty, ambling around. They didn’t help us as we rode the carriage close, and Rob and David hefted a chest between them. They walked it to the stairway, a wooden thing that led up to the entrance of the tower and could be rolled away if enemies approached.

The thing creaked as they went up, and I followed slow behind them.

They brought the chest into the treasury room on the lowest floor of the tower. They set the chest down and went back to repeat the task, and I stood watch over the room. The man of accounts came to me and asked the sums, and I told him.

He left, and I unlocked the chest that Rob and David had just set down.

A dirty face looked up at me. “Quick,” I told him.

The young man leapt out of the chest. I went out to the hall and Allan were there. “This way,” he told me, and he grabbed one chest while the boy grabbed another.

They disappeared into a smudge of darkness underneath the stairs.

Rob and David came down again with a chest.

I frowned. “Where are your swords?” I asked them.

“They keep hitting the stairs,” David said. “We put them in the carriage.”

Hairs raised on the back of my neck. “Hurry, then.”

Rob gave me a solemn nod, laying the chest down.

Again, one of Kate’s orphans sprang out of a chest, and he waited for Allan and the other to return, leading them down to a secret entrance in the bottom of the tower that let out onto the river.

“We call it Traitor’s Gate,” Allan had told us. “But seeing as thieves don’t have much say about it, I doubt that name will stick.”