listening for singing. Even here at the Tower, however, there was nothing. If magic had been involved in Melisande’s escape, I had missed it. Though I knew I ought to check her cell as well.
When I suggested as much, Knollys offered to take me there, and we crossed the innermost ward in the rain.
“How exactly did she escape?” I asked.
Knollys told me that they’d kept a close watch on Melisande until a sea monster had been sighted from the Tower walls. “We rushed out to defend the Tower, of course. Melisande was still unconscious, so I thought there was no danger in leaving her, especially as I left young Barrington on guard.” Knollys shook his head in frustration. “But when we came back, she was gone.”
“And Barrington?” I said as we entered the tower where Melisande had been kept.
“Left his post, the young fool,” Knollys said with a flinty gaze that did not bode well for Barrington. “Says he heard singing outside and he went to see what it was.”
“Singing?”
Knollys shrugged. “That’s what he says. But he can’t describe it, except to say it didn’t sound like any singing he’d ever heard before, including yours. When I questioned him, he admitted that it might have been the echo of all the shouting and screaming out on the river while we fought the monster.”
I made a mental note to question Barrington myself.
“I take it you drove the monster off?” I said.
“Uddersby drove a spear right through it,” Knollys said with grim satisfaction. “It turned as clear as ice and sank like a stone. And here we are.” He unlocked the cell door and pushed it open.
I looked around the stone-walled room, bare of all but a rumpled straw pallet and some blankets. “This isn’t where I left her.”
“No, we moved her on Lord Gabriel’s advice. He thought she’d recover more quickly in a warmer room.”
As indeed she had. “You’re sure you locked her in?”
“Yes. Indeed, the door was still locked when Barrington returned.”
“Then how did she get out?”
Knollys’s voice was tight with frustration. “I don’t know, Chantress. It’s possible she had help from someone else. Some tradesmen made deliveries to the Tower kitchens just before the monster was sighted, and we’re trying to find out if they had anything to do with it, or if they saw anything amiss.” He walked over to the cell’s tiny barred window. “And some of the men have another theory.”
“They do?”
Knollys pointed to a damp corner of the room. “See the rainwater coming through there? It comes down from the roof, then drains out of the room through tiny cracks in the stone.”
I looked. The cracks were minute.
“They think she found a way to magic herself into the water and leave the room with it,” Knollys said. “And who’s to say she didn’t?”
Had Melisande used magic to escape? Or had someone come to her aid? Either way, I was determined to hunt her down. Over the next few hours, I questioned everyone involved, and I led another full search of the Tower. I sat for a long while by the dripping corner of the room, listening to the water’s songs, in case they held a clue of some kind. But none of it was any use. Melisande had well and truly vanished.
“What now?” Knollys asked me.
“We return to Whitehall.” Much as I hated to concede defeat, it was time to go back. In another hour or so, it would be nightfall, and the Thames was still high and swollen. I hated to think what Westminster looked like now.
Before we left, Knollys and I discussed how best to deploy the men. Some had been stationed in and around Melisande’s rooms since the morning, searching for information about her and her followers; they needed to be relieved. I dispatched other men to various points around the city. The rest of us went to Whitehall.
It was a long trip. An edict had come through from the King, forbidding boats from taking to the river, so the warders at the Tower had arranged for us to travel by carriage instead. Even at the best of times, I was not fond of carriages, and this journey seemed endless, for we stopped frequently as the wheels became mired in muck. By the time we finally jounced through the palace gates, my head was pounding.
Gritting my teeth, I made a last few arrangements with Knollys, then jumped out of the carriage, my mind full of all I must do. Deciding to check