The Last Princess (21 page)

The rider came toward me. I saw the blond hair, the straight teeth, and raised my sword to swing at him. He blocked my attack, then twisted his wrist, somehow wrenching my sword from my grasp. The next thing I knew I was on the ground, his blade at my throat.

“I want you alive,” Cornelius Hollister gasped
through gleaming white teeth.

31

“LOCK HER IN THE DUNGEON,” HOLLISTER ORDERED HIS MEN. THE
guards grabbed me roughly, cuffing my hands behind my back and shackling my feet with chains. They dragged me across the battlefield in the pouring rain. The last thing I saw as they pushed me into the White Tower was Caligula galloping through the closing gates, the spear still protruding from her flank.

The hatchway closed, and
the iron grids slammed against the damp stone floor. I was alone in the dungeon, a stone room with a twenty-foot ceiling and no windows.

“She won’t be able to get away this time,” one of the guards said to another as the sound of their footsteps retreated down the hallway.

I clutched at the bars and shook them in desperation, screaming until my throat was hoarse, but the iron bars were solid,
and no one came. Finally, I slid to the damp ground, exhausted. I felt too hollow, too empty to even cry. Mary and Jamie would die soon. The knowledge that I had failed them yet again hit me like a physical blow. All I wanted at this point was to say good-bye.

I curled up on my side, shivering in the cold, and took my locket from around my neck. As I stared at my mother’s photograph, I thought
about what Eoghan had been trying to tell me about faith. He wanted me to believe in something.
I believe in plenty of things
, I thought with a bitter smile. I believed that I was going to die tomorrow. I believed that Cornelius Hollister was evil. I believed that I would never see my siblings again.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I heard the jangling of keys and the pounding of
footsteps approaching my cell. I stood up quickly, pressing my face against the bars to peer through the darkness. The small yellow flame of a candle was bobbing down the hallway, growing closer and closer.

“Hello?” I called. “Hello?” I didn’t care who it was. I didn’t care if they were coming to kill me. I just felt relief knowing that I would see another person before the very end.

The face
of a guard appeared in front of the bars, illuminated by the dim light of the candle. He was an older man with gray hair and a leathery face riddled with wrinkles. Without speaking, he unlocked a tiny slot between the grates to pass me a tray of bread and a glass of water.

Then he cleared his throat and, keeping his eyes downcast, read aloud from a piece of paper.

“I come as the official envoy
of Cornelius Hollister to inform you that tomorrow morning, you will be executed alongside Mary Windsor and James Windsor. I have come to ask for any last requests.” The candle shone on his face.

“Rupert?” I said hesitantly. “Is that you?”

He said nothing, keeping his eyes trained on the paper in his hands. “Rupert,” I said again, positive now that it was our butler, a man I had known all my
life, “don’t you recognize me?”

“I am so sorry,” he finally said, raising his eyes to meet mine. “The night they raided the palace they killed my youngest son in front of me. They said if I resisted they would kill my daughter too.”

“They killed Spencer?” He was just a child, even younger than Jamie. The two of them had played together in the palace gardens, digging up worms and holding snail
races in the shaded grove.

“Your family was so good to me. I wish… I wish I could…” He shook his head, his voice breaking.

“Rupert, can you bring me to my brother and sister? Please? I just want to say good-bye to them.”

Rupert looked at me through the bars. The candlelight flickered against the gray stone walls. He shook his head and started to turn away.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. I stared
at his back. “I’m sorry that helping my family has cost you yours.”

He paused, and then he turned around. “I can try, Princess,” he said finally. “I can’t promise anything, but there are others like me, who remain loyal to the king, and to the free government.”

“Please, yes, please try,” I begged, my voice breaking. “Thank you, Rupert.”

He unlocked the door and led me through the damp, mazelike
tunnel that led to the White Tower, through the Cradle Tower, and finally into the Steel Tower, where three armed wardens watched the entranceway. They looked at me in surprise.

“Sirs,” Rupert said, as we approached the men, “I must speak with you for a moment.” The two younger guards looked to the older warden, who seemed to be in charge. He nodded, and Rupert leaned in to murmur something in
his
ear. He nodded again, slowly. I thought I saw pity in his eyes. “Eliza Windsor will come with me.” His voice was shaky with age, and kind.

The other two backed away as the guard led me up the staircase to the top of the tower. I thought of the last time I had been up these stairs, when I sneaked up here after the girl with Mary’s teacup. I was full of hope, so very certain that I would rescue
Mary and Jamie and that we would all be free. How foolish I had been to think a girl like me could outwit a sadistic dictator and his army of thousands.

Our footsteps echoed on the metal stairway as we made our way up and up and upward still. All the other cells that we passed, cells that had been full to bursting, were empty now. Cornelius Hollister had already executed the other prisoners.
He was saving us for last. Grimly, I imagined how he would kill Jamie first, then me, then as his grand finale, he would kill Mary, England’s true queen.

Then he would climb Tower Green and place the royal crown upon his head, the crown that I had helped steal. Wearing my family’s crown, he would raise his arms, proclaiming himself king of England, while our royal blood dripped down the scaffold
onto Tower Green.

32

THE GUARD’S CANDLE HAD BURNED DOWN ALMOST TO THE WICK BY
the time we finally reached Mary and Jamie’s cell. They sat huddled together at the small table, a plate of food in front of them, but they were not eating. In an act of ironic generosity, the plate was filled with luxuries: cheese and fruit and soft bread. This was their last meal.

I paused for a moment at the top of the stairs,
watching them in disbelief. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but Jamie looked… healthy. His cheeks, which just a few weeks ago had been sunken and hollow, now appeared round and full. His hair had grown thick and shining. He sat up straight at the table, talking animatedly with Mary.

“Remember when Dad took us fishing to try to catch dinner and all we caught were minnows?” Jamie laughed.

Mary looked up, her eyes glistening. She looked better, too, like she had been sleeping. “And what about the time when you wanted the toy car for Christmas, and Eliza and I wrapped it in about twenty boxes so you kept unwrapping one after another?”

“That car is still on the shelf in my room….” Jamie’s voice trailed off. “What do you think happened to our house? Do you think the whole palace burned?”

“Good memories, good memories only,” Mary said, like a teacher to a student, squeezing his hand.

I couldn’t help but smile. Even on the last night of our lives, Mary was still the protective, bossy, loving older sister, always determined to make good from the bad. This was why she would have been a great queen. In her reign she would have found a way to restore the crops, to rebuild the cities—to
fix what was broken.

When I turned to the guard, I could see him wiping away a tear. He unlocked the cell to let me in.

Mary and Jamie looked up, their eyes wide with surprise. “Eliza?”

“I’ll let you have some time to yourselves. God bless you
all.” The guard looked like he might say something else. He hesitated, as though considering whether to leave the lock open, giving us a chance to escape.
But then he turned the key with a sigh, and the bolt slid into place.

Mary stared at me, stunned. “We thought you were dead.”

Jamie ran into my arms, knocking me backward so that we fell together in a heap on the floor. Mary came over and hugged us both.

“Mary, Jamie.” My eyes moved back and forth between them. “What happened?” I reached out to touch Jamie’s face, his hair, in wonder. His skin
felt warm, not cold and clammy as it usually did. “You look so healthy!”

Mary and Jamie shared a silent look. “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

Mary put her fingers over her lips, indicating that I should be quiet. She went to the door of the cell and peered out through the bars. The guard wasn’t far off, but his back was to us.

“We promised we would never tell.”

“He said he would be killed if
anyone found out,” Jamie said.

“Who would be killed?”

Jamie went over to the thin mattress on the floor and
pulled back the piece of muslin he had been given for a blanket. He put his hand beneath it and pulled out an amber-colored glass vial, full of small white pills.

He pressed the vial into my hand. “It’s an antidote for dark-star poisoning.”

Dark star
. It was what poisoned my mother when
she was pregnant with Jamie. I stared at the bottle in disbelief. All these years there had been a remedy and we hadn’t known. On the label in tiny pinpoint letters was written
C. H. LABORATORIES
. Of course Cornelius Hollister, the man who invented dark star, had also invented a cure for it.

“Who gave this to you?” I asked.

“One of the soldiers.”

“Which one?”

“He never told us his name,” Mary
said. “He wasn’t one of the regular soldiers. He came just once, to give us the medicine.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?”

“It was too dark to see. He left it in the night while we were sleeping. I just heard something drop through the door slot.”

I stared at the bottle. “Why would he have given you the cure when he knew we were going to die anyway?” I said aloud, then immediately regretted
it.

“Eliza!” Mary said in a harsh whisper. Her eyes went to Jamie, healthy at last, but unable to live to enjoy it.

“Well, it’s true,” I said helplessly, pressing my face into my hands. For the first time in his life, Jamie was healthy. We were all three together. And in the morning we would all die together.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “It just seems so unfair. So cruel.” I stopped myself from
saying anything else.

Mary bit her top lip, a habit of hers when she was nervous or trying to make a decision. “Eliza, what happened? We overheard one of the soldiers say that you escaped the Tower, and then they said you were dead.”

I sat between them on the bed, all of us holding hands. They listened intently as I told them of diving off the top of the Tower—Mary cried out at that—of riding
north on Caligula, of raising the Resistance army and marching back to London. Finally I told them about our failed attack on the Tower that morning.

“The last thing I saw was Caligula escaping just as the gates shut. I hope Polly makes it,” I said, squeezing Mary’s hand.

The candle flame sputtered out and the cell went dark. From far away came the echoing sounds of footsteps patrolling the
Tower. Jamie laid his head on my shoulder and I
closed my eyes, breathing in the scent of his hair. I felt my lip quiver, my eyes blur with tears, but I forced myself to think of happy things.

“Do you think there really is a Heaven?” Jamie asked, his small voice floating up into the darkness.

I lay still, afraid to answer, because I wasn’t sure.

“Yes, Jamie,” Mary said. “And tomorrow we’ll
see Mum and Dad.”

“And Bella,” I added. “She’ll bark the second she sees you.”

Jamie giggled. To laugh at our own death seemed strange, but it was all we could do. I turned over on my side. Jamie’s hand lay across my back, and I felt the steady rise and fall of his chest. I looked over to see if Mary was asleep. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open as she breathed softly. Even in sleep
she had a composed, dignified look on her face.

I leaned forward, kissing Mary on the forehead, then Jamie. Now I was finally free to cry. I hid my face in the blanket to muffle my sobs.

We used to say our prayers every night when we were younger, and now I heard myself saying them once more. “God bless the people I will leave behind: Polly, George, Clara…” As I spoke, I thought of all the dead
bodies piled in the courtyard. “Please, God, let Eoghan see his sons again.
Let Polly live. Let her mother and father find safety. Please watch over the general, and all the soldiers. And dear God, keep us together in Heaven with our mother and father. And thank you for the life I have had. Amen.”

33

THEY BLINDFOLDED US AT DAWN. I NEVER SAW THE FACES OF THE
soldiers who came to take us; I only heard their voices. They were not mean or rough, just efficient as they prepared us for our death.

One of the men, with a low voice and hands that smelled of cigarette smoke, told us to stand with our hands behind our backs. When he tied my wrists together his skin felt like sandpaper.

There
was the rattle of keys, the cell door opening. “Mary, Elizabeth, James,” the man said, lining us up in birth order. They marched us through the hallway and down the spiral staircase. The guard gripped my wrist so tightly I began to lose feeling in my fingers.

“Careful, Jamie,” I whispered. I was about to remind him to hold the banister when I remembered his hands were tied.

Unable to see, I
took small steps. I had a vivid memory of a time when Bella, still a puppy, had chased a stick onto a frozen pond. I tiptoed out onto the ice to get her. The way I was walking now, as though I was afraid the floor would break beneath me, reminded me of how I’d stepped across the frozen ice.

I heard Mary ahead of me. Even now, she moved with a queen’s elegant, even footsteps. Of all of us, she’d
had the clearest vision of her future and the life she was now being forced to give up. I thought of how often she used to say, “When I’m married,” or “When I’m queen,” or “When I have children…” She used to keep a list of her favorite names, one for boys and another for girls. Today, she would not scream or break her composure. She would stay strong. Dying with grace wasn’t exactly something we
had been taught in our royal etiquette lessons, but Mary had lived like a queen for eighteen years, and I was certain she would die like one.