The Sixth Wife_ The Story of Katherine P - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,63

of the oars as she was carried away from the grim fortress of the Tower of London back to Greenwich.

THE MAN WITH THE lantern reentered the Tower and had scarcely taken three steps inside the building when two men took their stand on either side of him.

“Where go you, sir jailor?” asked one.

“Where go I?” blustered the man, and he felt as though cold water were dripping down his back, although he was sweating with fear. “Where go I? To my post, of course.”

“Who was the fair lady to whom you have just bade farewell?” enquired the other man.

“Fair lady…? I…?”

“You conducted her to a certain cell, did you not?”

“You are mistaken.”

The lantern was suddenly taken from his hand, and he was pinioned.

“This way,” said one of his captors. “We have questions to ask you.”

They pushed him roughly along through the gloomy passages. Terror walked with him. A short while ago the Tower had been to him merely the prison of others; now it was his prison.

“I…I havedone… nothing.”

“Later, later,” said a soft voice in his ear. “You shall speak for yourself later.”

They were taking him into unfamiliar byways. He could hear the fierce chorus of rats as they fought with their human victims; he could hear the piercing screams for help from those miserable prisoners who were chained to the walls and who, when they heard footsteps coming their way, shouted for help without any hope that it would be given to them. They took him past the pits in which men were chained, the dirty water up to their knees; the lantern showed him their faces, wildeyed and unkempt, faces that had lost their human aspect, as they fought the hungry pests which could not wait for them to die.

“Whither… whither are you taking me?”

“Patience, friend, patience!” said the voice in his ear.

Now he was in a chamber, and although he had never seen it before, he knew what it was. He had heard much of this chamber. The dim light from the lamp which hung from the ceiling confirmed his horrible fear.

He smelled blood and vinegar, and he knew them for the mingling odors of the torture chambers; and when his eyes were able to see through the mist of fear, he picked out a man at a table with writing materials before him. Much as he desired to, he could no longer doubt that he was in the torture chamber.

The man at the table had risen; he came forward as though to greet the jailor in friendship. There was a smile on this man’s face, and the jailor guessed from his clothes that he was a personage of some importance. He knew that he himself had been a fool to take a bribe and get himself involved with the kind of people who would be interested in Anne Askew. A jailor was subject to bribery. You took a little here, a little there. But he wished he had never meddled in the case of Anne Askew.

“You know why you are here, my friend,” said the personage.

“Yes…yes, my lord. But I have done nothing.”

“You have nothing to fear. You have only to answer a few questions.”

God in Heaven! thought the sweating jailor. That is what they are all told. “You have merely to answer a few questions!”

“Allow me to show you round the chamber,” said the jailor’s host. “You see here the gauntlets, the thumbscrews, the Spanish collar… the Scavenger’s Daughter. You, who serve the King as one of his jailors, know the uses to which these toys may be put, I doubt not.”

“I do, my lord. But I have done nothing.”

“And here is the rack. The most interesting of them all. My friend, a man is a fool who lets his limbs be stretched on that instrument. There is no need for it. No wise man need let his limbs be broken on the rack. You look pale. Are you going to faint? They deal well with fainting here. The vinegar is a quick restorative…so they tell me.”

“What… what do you want of me?”

The man gripped his arm.

“Answer my questions and go back to your work. That is all I ask of you. Give me truth and I’ll give you freedom.”

“I will tell you anything you want to know.”

“That is well. I knew you were a sensible man. Sit here…here on this stool. Now … have you recovered? Let us be quick; and the quicker the better, say you; for when you have given the simple