like her, Moss knew that. She’d stayed in the Tower once. The night before her coronation. And though Moss hadn’t seen the Queen herself, she’d heard plenty of tongues clacking. They said that her clothes were too showy. Her manners too French. That she was an upstart who didn’t know her place.
Moss took a good look. Was that really her? The velvet cloak, too heavy for summer, weighed down her small frame. She didn’t look much like a firecracker, thought Moss. More like a broken twig. Her movements seemed fragile. Hiding under the shadow of her cloak, her face was anxious. And when the stone-eyed man said something in her ear, she flinched.
Now the drum was beating. The Yeomen were coming. Forcing their way up the path to the hill, bright in their red and yellow livery.
Moss peered round Pa to get a better look. The Yeomen were bunched in a tight wall around the prisoner, but there he was. Slow as an old bull in the July heat. Sir Thomas More was a good man, people said. A devout man. But King Henry the Eighth had no time for goodness or devotion if it didn’t get him what he wanted. And Moss wondered at how quickly the King’s best friend could become his bitterest enemy, with all of London jostling for a glimpse of his death.
In the Tower the bell began to toll. Moss clutched her basket.
It was time.
All around her the crowd was pressing.
On the scaffold Pa was waiting.
Sir Thomas climbed the steps, his white cotton gown laced loosely about his neck. White so the blood would show. And at that moment, Moss wished so desperately that Pa would lay down his axe. Punch a soldier. Leap off the scaffold, grab her and dive into the crowd. Let them take their chances in one glorious dash for freedom.
She drilled her gaze at Pa.
He wasn’t going anywhere. That was obvious.
She saw his eyes flicker through the slits in his hood and there was a cheer as he took out the blindfold. She watched Sir Thomas push a pouch of coins into his hands. It was the custom of course, but she hated that Pa took it. Money for a good death. Make it quick. Make it painless. Pay and pray.
She fixed her eyes on the straw. Spread in a wide arc around the block, it would soon be soaking in wine-dark blood. Behind her the crowd hushed, looking on hungrily as Sir Thomas let Pa guide his neck into position.
The hill held its breath.
Pa raised his axe.
With a single blow, it hit the block. Clean. Just like always.
The crowd exhaled. From inside the Tower a cannon fired and a cloud of white doves fluttered over the turrets, their heads dyed red. Everyone gasped. It was all Moss could do to stop herself throwing up.
On the scaffold Pa stood over the slumped body of Sir Thomas, wiping his axe on the sack. That was her cue.
She thumped the basket on the ground. The Lieutenant plucked Sir Thomas’s dripping head from the straw and lobbed it over the edge of the scaffold, where it landed with a whack in the basket. The crowd went wild.
Moss picked up the basket. Pa was by her side now. She couldn’t look at him. Instead she concentrated on getting down the hill without stumbling. She was glad of the distraction and tried not to notice Sir Thomas’s unmoving eyes, rolled forever to the sky.
‘I’m not touching that thing, so don’t even bother to ask!’
‘Leave the axe then, just help me with the broadswords –’
But Moss wasn’t listening. She clomped out of the forge, slammed the door and kicked the water bucket hard, sending a spray of drops into the bitter morning air. It was freezing. Even for January. Fog every night, frost every morning, with a chill that Moss couldn’t shake from her bones.
Six months had passed since the beheading of Sir Thomas. A bloody summer, a miserable autumn and a long, cold winter that wasn’t over yet.
It was barely dawn, but already the people of the Tower were up and busy. Stable lads were trundling oat barrels over the courtyard and kitchen girls bickered as they carried breakfast to the Lieutenant’s Lodgings. From the open shutter behind her came the rasp of bellows, breathing life into the fire. When he wasn’t chopping heads on the hill, Pa worked as Tower blacksmith. The little stone forge where they lived was set apart from the bigger buildings of the Tower. Huddled against the East Wall like a cornered mouse, it had been Moss’s home for as long as she could remember.
‘Moss! Come inside! Now!’
She shivered. A fog was rolling in from the river, curling over the high walls, fingers poking through the cold stone turrets. Tower folk crossed themselves when the river fog came. It was a silent creeper. A hider. A veil for the unseen things. Things that might crawl from the water. From the black moat, or from the swirling river that slipped and slid its way through London, treacherous as a snake. But whatever it was that made them afraid, it had never shown itself to Moss. The fog didn’t scare her.
‘Moss!’
She gave the bucket another kick.
‘Will you come in?’
She sighed and dragged herself back through the forge door. Inside, Pa was polishing the axe.
‘Bread and cheese for you on the table.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
Pa turned the axe, rubbing oil into the blade. It was his little ritual and he did it every morning.
‘When there’s food on the table, you should eat.’
Moss said nothing. What was there to say? This was her life and she just had to accept it. Pa was the Tower Executioner. She was his helper. They were prisoners and this was pretty much it, because they were never getting out. She’d asked Pa a thousand times how they’d ended up in the Tower. Each time she got the same gruff reply. Pa had been a blacksmith. And then a soldier. Accused of killing a man in his regiment, he and Ma had gone on the run. They’d hidden in a river, where the shock of the icy water sent Ma into labour.
‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it,’ Pa had said. ‘It was a miracle. You swam from your mother until your fingers broke the surface. Then you held on to me with those fierce little fists. And I didn’t let go.’
Of course, the soldiers got Pa in the end. And he would have been executed there and then had it not been for his captain. Pa was the captain’s finest swordsman. His kills were clean and accurate. And rather than waste such a talent, the captain wanted to put it to good use. For he was William Kingston, the new
