Jane
Jane, as it happened, was fleeing for her life.
After escaping the city, they’d started in . . . some direction. Still in her ferret state, Jane clung to Gifford’s shoulder while he rode their stolen horse out of London as fast as they could go. Pet ran on ahead of them, leading the way. To where, Jane couldn’t tell.
It was away from Mary’s soldiers; that was all that mattered.
The roads would be the first place anyone would look, so they diverted into the forest. The hooves of their stolen steed beat the ground in a relentless tempo. Hounds bayed in the distance, making Pet lift her nose to the wind. It seemed their pursuers gained on them. Jane huddled in the curve of Gifford’s neck, terrified and exhausted, as they veered here and there, lost in the dark, dark night.
Gifford hunched lower over the horse. Jane scrambled to adjust her weight, but he scooped her up and held her against his chest. “I have a plan,” he said.
Wonderful. Jane loved plans.
He glanced down at her. “It’s a good plan. I think.”
Jane bit him—not hard—urging him to just get it out.
“Shortly, the sun will rise and I will begin my daily departure from my two-legged self to my four-legged self, and then we will be able to move more quickly. I’ll send my equine friend here off on another path to create a diversion. Meanwhile, you will remain in your ferrety form and I will carry you . . . somewhere safe.”
Jane cocked her head. It wasn’t a terrible plan (although it was a tad vague), but what about Horse Rule 3? (No riding the horse.)
Gifford shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking, dear, but now’s not the time for such rules. We need to be fast. You weigh next to nothing in this form. As long as we can find a way to secure you to me without the use of those magnificent claws, I’ll be able to run at top speed.”
That sounded good to Jane.
“Excellent,” said Gifford. “I’m glad we’re agreed.”
They careened down a narrow deer trail. The minutes stretched like hours. With the trees growing tall and ancient all around them, it was difficult to track the moon and stars. But eventually the woods lightened to a soft purple, and birds began to sing, and Jane felt herself breathe more easily. This terrible night was almost over, and she’d survived it. They were still being hunted down like dogs, sure. But things never seemed as bad in the light of day.
Gifford called to Pet and reined in the horse.
They were just slowing to a trot when Jane changed.
One instant, she was a ferret, cupped in Gifford’s hand and pressed against his chest. The next, she was engulfed in a blinding white light and then she was a girl, sitting sideways on the saddle with her legs hanging off one side, and she was most definitely naked.
Their stolen horse snorted and stopped, disgusted with the sudden weight of two people.
“Jane! This wasn’t part of the plan!” Gifford untied his cloak and threw it around her shoulders. “You didn’t bite me when I explained it, so I assumed we were in agreement.”
Jane scrambled off the saddle and landed in an undignified heap on the ground. She tried to get up, but her legs were wobbly after the sudden transformation.
Gifford dismounted and knelt beside her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
There’d been so much she’d wanted to tell him before, when she’d been locked in the Tower, but now (possibly for the first time in her life) Jane felt tongue-tied.
Gifford looked like he wanted to say something, too. He took her hands in his, fingers grazing the rings of cuts and bruises on her wrists from the shackles, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Her wrists hadn’t hurt so much as a ferret, though there’d been a shadow of pain. Now they felt like they were on fire.
“You’re wounded,” Gifford observed.
“It’s nothing.” She tried to smile at him. “So, I suppose I can’t control the change yet.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “What’s that, you say? You can’t control the change? How’s that possible, when you’ve read so very many books on E∂ians?”
Her face felt hot. She sat up straighter. “Well, these are just less-than-ideal conditions. I will be able to perfect the change with a bit of practice, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will. You should try. Change back, and we’ll go,” he said.
He was teasing her. She wasn’t sure if she liked it. She took a deep breath and concentrated on the idea of becoming a ferret again, because that was the plan, but nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing.
Gifford’s gaze dropped to her collarbone. Then the shape of her under the cloth. “Wait. Never mind. Stay just like that.”
Jane yanked the cloak more tightly around her and jumped to her feet. “Gifford Dudley! Eyes to yourself.”
He laughed and began taking off his boots. And then his socks. And then his belt.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s morning,” he explained as he continued undressing. “These are my only clothes—the guards gave them to me when I was moved from the stables to the Tower—so it would be a real shame to ruin them in my transformation.”
His shirt went next, revealing the contours of his chest. Jane tried not to stare. When he began tugging at his trousers, she meeped, clapped her hands over her eyes, and spun away. “Have you no shame?”
“None at all.”
“And I don’t suppose you brought clothes for me?”
He whinnied in reply.
Jane turned around. “No clothes for me?” she repeated to her husband, the horse.
Gifford didn’t answer.
She bit her lip and eyed the clothing strewn over the ground. Trousers. How degrading. But less degrading, possibly, than spending the day wrapped in a thin cloak and nothing else.
A sharp bark pierced the air, startling her. Pet had circled back to find them all just standing around doing nothing. She barked again, and Jane remembered the soldiers still pursuing them.
They had to hurry.
Gifford’s plan had been all well and good, but what kind of plan was go somewhere safe? Now that she was the sole human of the group, the decisions were up to her, she supposed. Because no one here was capable of talking back.
First, she decided, she would get dressed.
“Gifford.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t want to question your honor, but that’s exactly what I’m doing.” She threw the cloak over his head so that he couldn’t peek at her while she put on the clothes he’d just discarded.
Gifford-the-horse made a huffing sound, but held still as she dressed. His clothes were warm and slightly sweaty. They smelled of horse. Everything was much too big, but she tightened the belt as small as it would go and rolled the hems of her pants and sleeves. Then she tied her hair into a quick braid and freed Gifford of his blind.
“So I’m to ride on your back?” she asked nervously. “And break Horse Rule three?”
He tossed his head in the affirmative.
She tromped over in too-large boots to inspect the other horse’s saddle.
She’d read about saddles in The Great Saddle Controversy: Pros and Cons of Various Saddles and the Best Choice for a Patriotic Englishman. This saddle only vaguely resembled the ones she’d seen sketched in the book, but how hard could it be? Seat, saddle tree, girth, blanket. There was a small saddlebag as well, but Jane didn’t open it to inspect its contents. No time.
Pet let out a yip. Hurry, she seemed to say.
“Hold your horses,” Jane muttered as she began to unsaddle the borrowed horse. This proved to be a challenge, since the horse was much taller than she, and the saddle weighed at least half what she did, but finally she managed to haul it off and dump it on the ground.
The pad of blanket underneath was damp with sweat, but she didn’t have a choice except to drape it over Gifford’s back with an apology. Still, she was wearing his clothes. He could wear their horse’s blanket.
Next came the saddle again. Gifford was at least kind enough to walk over to a large rock, flat enough for Jane to stand on. But his movement had gotten the blanket all out of place, so she had to drop the saddle, fix the blanket, and urge Gifford to stay still while she adjusted the saddle into place. With some difficulty, she fitted the girth strap into its buckle and tugged as tight as she dared. When she hopped off the rock to inspect her work, she realized horse-Gifford looked a lot . . . rounder than normal. “Are you holding your breath?”
Gifford blew out and resumed his normal proportions while Jane tried again to tighten the girth.
By now, Pet was running circles around the group. Jane gave the girth strap one more good yank—Gifford dramatically heaved a breath—and then reached for the other horse’s bridle.
Gifford shied away from her, snorting. The message was clear: she might be able to break Horse Rules 1 and 3, but Horse Rule 2 still stood. No bridling the horse.
“Fine, but at least let me take this off. I don’t want him to trip on the reins.” She unbuckled the other horse’s bridle and let it slide to the ground. Then she grabbed the saddlebag and strapped it onto Gifford.
Pet whined and barked and circled again, tighter. Both horses’ ears flickered backward. Even Jane could hear the pounding of hooves now. Mary’s men were catching up.
She threw herself onto Gifford’s back and tried not to fall off as he launched himself like an arrow in the direction they’d been heading before, the other horse following close behind.
Jane tried to keep her head down. Twigs and brush snapped around her as Gifford ran tirelessly on. He leapt and swerved and pounded through the trees and close underbrush, sure-footed and strong, and even when the forest became too thick for speed, he stubbornly continued forward.
They’d been going for a while when, as abruptly as he’d started, Gifford stopped. The other horse stopped, too, and Pet, who sat down a few feet away. For a minute they all just stood there, breathing hard.
“What are we doing?” Jane hissed.
The other horse began ripping up bites of grass. Gifford bobbed his head, as if acknowledging a good idea, and nibbled on his own patch of greenery.
“Gifford, this is not the ideal time to take a break,” Jane admonished him, leaning over his neck. “The soldiers are still close.”
Gifford shook his head so his mane rubbed across her face. She spat out horsehair, straining to hear anything under the wind rustling trees and the horse teeth grinding grass into a gross, green pulp.
“This is stupid,” she commented.
Then, without warning, Gifford turned on the other horse and bit the air close to his nose.
The horse—previously believing Gifford to be a friendly man-horse—reared up and screamed. Jane shrieked and clutched the pommel as tightly as she could while Gifford pushed forward, snapping and lunging at the other horse. He circled around him, blocking the jagged path of the way they’d come until the poor creature had no choice but to peel off into the woods.
They listened to the horse crash through the underbrush. Then Jane, Gifford, and Pet were alone.
Jane pressed her hands against her chest and dropped her forehead against Gifford’s neck. “That was mean,” she said, and reached forward to flick his ear. “He was a nice horse.”
Gifford blew out a breath and immediately began picking his way through the woods, doubling back to the deer trail.
So as to leave less of a trail, Jane realized. Now anyone who followed them here would likely follow the new trail the other horse had left, not expecting Jane and Gifford to go back the way they’d come.
“I see now,” Jane said. “I guess I forgot the plan. That was still mean, though. You should try to be nicer to the other horses. You’re herd animals. Who will you run with if he goes back to tell the others of your two-faced personality? Who will you compare apple notes with? Soon you won’t have any friends but me.”
They ran on and on until the sky turned a fiery red. They’d lost their pursuers hours ago, no baying dogs or thundering horses behind them now, but they still kept up a steady pace through the woods. She was just about to suggest that they make camp when they came upon a small, abandoned farm. Gifford paused at the edge of the trees, giving Jane a chance to appraise the tumbledown cottage and the barn tucked behind it.
“This seems a good place to spend the night, doesn’t it?”
Gifford made a noise that sounded like assent and she slid from his back to look around. Pet ran with her, tail flagged with canine joy, stopping every few feet to check for danger. They found none. The cottage was in bad shape, the thatched roof caved in and the rooms full of birds and mouse nests, but the barn still seemed intact. They could take shelter there.
Jane’s legs were shaky from riding so long, and her whole body felt weak with hunger, but she was able to haul open the barn door just wide enough for a saddled horse to fit through, and then Gifford trotted inside, pausing to nose at her shoulder as he passed.
“I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. Oh. Sorry, G. Not you, of course.” She pulled the door closed. There was a rusty lantern hanging on the wall, and she moved to light it. Then she turned to Gifford. “Now let me take that saddle before you ruin it when you change.”
Pet zipped around the barn, sniffing here and there. Then, just as Jane was about to get to work, Pet ran back to the door and scratched to be let out. She looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“You should have gone before we came inside,” Jane muttered and opened the door a crack. Alone with her horse husband, Jane set about unbuckling the girth and relieving him of his humiliation. He shook and stretched at the sudden freedom, then—to Jane’s horror—rolled on to his back and rubbed himself against the dirt floor.
“Now that’s just ridiculous.” Jane snapped the blanket, making drops of sweat fly off, and laid it over a post to dry. The saddle followed.
It wasn’t long before sundown, so she dropped the cloak near him and dug through the saddlebag to search for additional clothing.
Nothing.
Instead she found a bag of cured meat and two containers of water. She’d drunk an entire flask of water and wolfed down nearly half the meat before she realized she ought to wait for Gifford to change, and give him the bigger share. Surely he was as hungry and thirsty as she was. He’d been on his feet all day.
“It seems we’re going to have to fight for the clothes,” Jane said. “One of us should get the shirt and trousers, and the other the cloak. As for the boots, they don’t fit me anyway, so you’ll just have to keep carrying me.”
A burst of light filled the barn, and then Gifford said, “As you wish.”
“G!” Jane spun around to find Gifford just pulling the cloak around himself. Impetuously she ran to embrace him, in spite of their awkward (and scandalous, though they were married, so did it really count as scandalous?) clothing situation.
“Jane.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.
It surprised her, this sudden gesture of affection, but she welcomed it.
“We survived the day,” she said against his chest. “We both kept our heads. Hoorah for us.”
A laugh rumbled through him. “So we did. Hoorah.”
She pulled away to smile up at him, and felt a paper crinkle in her breast pocket.
“What’s this?” She vaguely remembered feeling a folded parchment in the shirt earlier, but she’d been too busy fleeing for her life to give it any attention. She took it out and instantly recognized her own handwriting.
It was the letter she’d sent to Edward before she’d left for her honeymoon.
“Peter Bannister slid that under my door in Beauchamp Tower.” Almost hesitantly, Gifford brushed Jane’s face and smoothed back her hair. “I thought you might want to keep it.”
“Thank you.” All at once she felt safe, for the first time since their last night in the country house. She was tempted to snuggle back into the circle of his arms, but the letter seemed important. “Why would Peter Bannister want you to have this?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I thought he was just giving me something of yours. To comfort me.”
She turned the paper over. On the back there was a single word scrawled: skunk.
Her breath caught. “This is Edward’s handwriting.”
Gifford frowned. “Edward’s?”
“Edward’s! I’d know his writing anywhere. You see how he shapes the s? When we were younger we had this one terrible tutor—Richard Cox was his name—and he was always going on about Edward’s ghastly penmanship. ‘You should write like a king,’ he always chided him. He made the king copy pages and pages of the letter s.” She smiled at the memory. “Poor, dear Edward.”
“Yes, poor, dear Edward,” Gifford agreed faintly. “So what does skunk mean?”
“I don’t know. I—” She gasped. “Our gran—my great-grandmother, his grandmother—turned into a skunk. She was banished to an old abandoned castle in the north years ago. I’ve visited her there. It’s called Helmsley.”
“Does that mean Edward is alive?”
“I think it does.” She hugged Gifford again, elated by the idea of seeing her cousin. “If Edward’s alive, then he’s heading to Gran’s and we can go there, too, and then everything will be all right, you’ll see, and you and I can—”
Jane turned into a ferret.