The Reign of Trees (29 page)

***

Donovan did not need to explain what was happening in St. Moraine. It was clear that the city was in revolt. The peasants had united and turned on the king and his men. From what Madame Partlet had said, Illianah assumed that the revolt was being led by some of those from within the king’s own court: lords and barons who had come to the same conclusion that Donovan had. No one wanted Prince Harrington for a king. The only way to stop that from happening was to put an end to King Gregory’s reign.

What Donovan did explain to Illianah was that immediately after her hanging, the citizens had turned on the guards, attacking with stones, hidden knives, and swords. They had come to the hanging prepared to wage war against the mighty army of Burchess. They did not have sufficient weapons and no armor at all, but their attack was so quick that the king’s soldiers were caught off-guard and they quickly retreated into the safety of the inner ward of the castle. The city of St. Moraine was soon taken by the renegades and was sealed off so that soldiers from outlying cities could not come to the aid of the castle. The closure of the city wall had happened, thankfully, just moments after Donovan and his band of twenty men passed through.

However, the soldiers within the castle were defending their fortress with all their might. They quickly pushed the rebels out of the citizen’s courtyard and regained control of the castle’s outer wall. The constant crashing Illianah had heard from within the mausoleum was the sound of the canons atop the castle’s massive outer wall being fired on the citizens of St. Moraine. Illianah’s heart raced with fear as they dashed from building to building within the city, never knowing where the next ball would hit.

Donovan was being led by an unknown man. He was no doubt Burchessian and looked to be noble, yet she could not remember seeing him in court. He looked astonished when Donovan had immerged from the mausoleum with Illianah in tow, but then he had nodded and said, “We had hoped for as much, My Lady.” The entire situation was perplexing. It was like being at war, yet not knowing who your enemy was, nor where their boundary lay. Just as threatening as the balls crashing over their heads was the fact that the first man they might cross paths with could run a knife through their chests simply because he did not agree with the revolt.
  

As they got closer to the city wall, Donovan stopped and ducked into a doorway and removed his cloak. He put it across her shoulders and pulled the hood up over her hair. “I think it would be best if you remained dead for a time,” he said.

“You do not wish for the rebels to know of my triumph over death?” It seemed curious to her that her life should be kept secret from those very people who were fighting because of the injustice brought upon her.

“Not yet. We need their passion. They will not fight with such fierceness if they know you are alive. Your death marked the greatest injustice done by King Gregory yet, and without that fuel, there would be no fire.”

Illianah hated to deceive her people, yet she trusted Donovan unequivocally. She pulled the cloak forward so her face was hidden and followed him through the last rows of houses near the city’s edge. They reached the city wall, where it seemed that they were out of range of the castle’s cannons. It looked as if more than half of the population of St. Moraine had come to the city’s walls as well.

Donovan and Illianah followed the unknown man into the city’s gatehouse, where she recognized several of the men who were conversing within the protected walls of the tower. They were lords and barons and many of them were friends and relatives of Madame Partlet. One of the men—Count Leopold—recognized her, even with the hood covering most of her face. He let out a gasp. “She lives?” he asked, looking as if he was standing in front of a ghost.

Some of the men in the room had the same reaction as Count Leopold. Two men in the room did not have the same response. One was Madame Partlet’s husband, Sir Partlet. He smiled and first nodded at the princess before bowing. The other man was Madame Partlet’s brother, Sir Tannin, and also one of King Gregory’s most distinguished knights. His presence here amongst the renegades was significant, but the fact that he was one of three who knew of Madame Partlet’s life-saving device was all the evidence Illianah needed to surmise that Sir Tannin was leading the revolt. She approached and returned his bow. “Sir Tannin, what can I do to help with the attack?”

He smiled, obviously pleased that she had recognized his authority and said, “We have sufficient numbers to attack the castle. They only had three hundred men on post this morning, but we have thousands of citizens eager to fight for their freedom. What we do not have, however, is firepower. We cannot get past the cannons.”

“And the artillery? What do they have in their stores?”

“Enough to last a month, possibly more.”

“But they are cut off from the city. They will soon run out of food and medicine and …”

“Yes, but we only have days before the king’s troops outside the city come to his aid. We were not able to stop all the riders he sent out once the attack commenced. Soon we will have to worry about defending the city wall as well.”

Illianah knew her brow was creasing, but she did not expect her disappointment to be reflected in her voice. “You planned a revolt, but you did not plan on how to breach the castle’s wall?”

Sir Tannin did not seem offended by her inquiry and replied, “Our plan was to save your life and cause a big enough distraction to get a large number of renegade soldiers within the castle walls. We succeeded on one of those counts: I like to think it is the more significant of the two.”

While Illianah was grateful for the gift of her life, at the moment she did not know if it was in the best interest of the renegades. Getting inside the castle walls was critical to the success of their revolt. “We must construct catapults.”

“Our woodshop was the first building to take the balls of the castle’s cannons.”

“Then we find whatever scraps of wood we can and build the catapults out here at the wall, where we are safe from the cannon’s blast.”

Illianah was not the only one surprised with the way she exhibited authority. Several of the men looked taken aback by her order. She held her breath, wondering if they would expel her from the room and admonish her for speaking out of turn, but they did not. Sir Tannin nodded and ordered two of the men to go out into the streets and make it happen.

“And crossbows?” Illianah asked. “I assume we have at least some.”

“Yes. Enough for fifty archers.”

“Excellent,” she said. “Have them take to the rooftops. Not all at once, mind you, but a dozen or so at a time. They need to hide behind chimneys and shoot at the soldiers standing guard on the battlement. If they do so with great stealth, the king’s soldiers will not be able to find the location of their attackers. We may only take out a few of the king’s soldiers at a time, but it will be enough to give the king’s men something to fear.”

Sir Tannin again nodded and gave the order to another man, who also left. Illianah glanced at Donovan. He looked proud, as if she was a perfectly sketched portrait that he had drawn with his own hand. “Perhaps I should have put you in charge of the war against Burchess,” he said.

“You have not even heard how we are going to get into the castle.”

Donovan’s eyebrow arched. “Are you planning on walking up to the portcullis and demanding they let you in?”

Ignoring his comment, she asked, “What does nearly every castle have that no one is supposed to know about?”

Both his eyebrows arched this time.

“A secret passageway,” they both said at the same time.

“I have never been able to find one,” Sir Tannin said, “Not in all my years spent at the castle.”

“No,
you
would not find it, for it is located in the king’s chamber.”

Sir Tannin blinked and cocked his head as if he had just seen a wheel for the first time. “Right in the king’s chambers?” he asked. When Illianah nodded, he asked, “And the entry point is where?”

“On Tower Row.”

“Directly across from the castle?” he asked.

“Yes. It was used by King Derringer, and possibly others, as way to get to their mistresses without having said women harbored within the castle walls.” Illianah did not find this information out until a few years ago—when she realized that such relationships tainted the history of the
Boyés
—but she had actually found the tunnel in her youth. She had taken advantage of her father’s trip to New Burchess to investigate his chambers, which were always off-limits to the king’s daughter. However, when she had done the same thing several years later after discovering the purpose of such a tunnel, she had found that the tunnel had been sealed off at the entrance to the boudoir of the large house on Tower Row.

“You know the house?” Donovan asked.

That was where her plan got complicated. When she had explored the tunnel as a youth of ten, she had entered the empty house to explore. She had looked out the windows and knew the house was just a stone’s throw away from the castle’s east keep. “Approximately.”

“Approximately?” Sir Tannin asked.

“I have never seen it from the outside, but I think we can find it.”

“I do not know how. We cannot be running around Tower Row knocking on each door with a legion of soldiers standing atop the wall just thirty feet off.”

“I know it will be dangerous, but it is our only chance to get into the castle swiftly, before the Burchessian army comes banging at the gate.”

Sir Tannin studied her carefully and then he nodded and said, “Perhaps if we wait until nightfall to find the house …”

“No,” Illianah interrupted. “We do it now. They think the knowledge of that passageway died with me. It will be completely unexpected.”

“Which is why we wait until nightfall. If they see us milling about houses on Tower Row, they will know what we are up to,” Sir Tannin said.

“At the rate they are destroying houses and buildings, we have no guarantee that house will still be standing at nightfall,” Illianah replied, setting her jaw firmly.

Sir Tannin hesitated and again looked to Donovan before he would make a decision. Finally Sir Tannin nodded and said, “All right. We will prepare to move out. Fredrick,” he said, calling to one of the other men, “Find us some armor. And we will need an escort of at least a dozen armed men.”

“Can you tell us every detail you know about the house?” Donovan asked.

She turned to Donovan, confused at his inquiry. “Why would I need to tell you about it when I can just show you?”

“You are not coming with,” he said kindly.

“Of course I am. Why would you think I would not?”

He smiled, but not because he was happy. It looked like he was trying to keep her from launching an attack. “It is much too dangerous, Illianah. We cannot risk the life that you so recently won.”

“Then you are not to go either?” she asked.

“I am needed. I know the inside of the castle.”

“Then I go as well. You did say that whatever we do, we do it together.”

He nodded somberly. He would not go back on his word. “Get her a full suit of armor,” he said to Sir Tannin.

The two men then began discussing how many men they should send into the passageway and what tactic they should employ to take over the castle once inside. It was Sir Tannin’s suggestion that they lie in wait inside the passageway until they are certain that the king would retire and then stab him while he slept.

“No!” Illianah gasped. “His life is not ours to take.”

Both men stared at her as if she had just spoken in a foreign tongue.

“Illianah,” Donovan said, his voice low and gentle, “Your father ordered your death. You do not owe him tribute.”

“And this is not the time to offer compassion,” Sir Tannin said. “If the king is dead and we are able to get to Prince Harrington’s chambers next, the castle will be ours. It is the easiest way.”

“Possibly the only way,” Donovan added.

“We do not have the authority to judge him and order his death. And if we capture the throne through bloodshed, we will not have established a legitimate claim on the crown. We will be nothing more than murderous renegades,” Illianah said. With as much pain as her father had caused her, she found it strange she was defending his life. However, whether he lived or died was not for her to decide. The only thing that mattered was that the castle was captured; that could be done by keeping King Gregory and Prince Harrington alive.

“Same tactic,” she said, “but we only capture the King, not kill him. We bind him, take out his guards, and then do the same thing with Prince Harrington. We can secure the entire interior of the castle under the cover of darkness, and when the sun rises, we show the soldiers atop the battlement that we have them surrounded and we have their leaders. They will have no choice but to surrender.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Finding the correct house on Tower Row was difficult, to say the least. Had it just been an ordinary day, Illianah could have taken her time walking up and down the street gauging each house and its distance from the east keep, but as it was, they could not even peek their heads around the corner of the houses. If any of their comrades were to step into the street, even for a second, the Burchessian soldiers on the wall would be alerted to the renegade’s activity and mortar would quickly fly.

They gained entrance to the homes from behind, typically using a servant’s entrance, and then made their way from room to room, hoping Illianah would recognize the house as the one that she had stumbled upon as a youth. But that house had been vacant when she had walked through the rooms; all of these houses were—until earlier that day—inhabited. At first, it felt awkward intruding on someone’s private living quarters, but Illianah had to lay that hesitation aside and focus on the task only she could complete.

She narrowed it down to three houses; each was similar in size and structure. “It could be this one,” she said at the last house.

“But we have searched each of the bedchambers,” Sir Tannin said, “and there is not a secret passageway.”

“That is because it was sealed off.”

“What?” Sir Tannin was not the only one who had replied. Donovan’s voice had inquired as well.

“When was this passage sealed off?” Sir Tannin asked.

“I do not know for certain. I tried to explore the passageway a few years back, but it had been sealed off with brick and mortar.”

“And you did not think this was pertinent to divulge when we were discussing this mission?” It was clear that Sir Tannin was out of patience with Illianah, even if she was royalty.

“I did not,” she answered sternly. “The wall can be easily taken apart. I will do it with my own hands, brick by brick if I have to. It does not stop our mission: it only slows it down.”

Donovan did not look irritated with her like Sir Tannin did. The expression on Donovan’s face was one of amusement, and she could not help but notice he still looked proud of her actions. It made her heart warm. That was an expression she was completely unfamiliar with here in her home territory of Burchess.

Illianah went into the biggest bedchamber in the house and—first making certain she could not be seen from the window—she looked across the street to where the massive castle wall separated the city from their elite leadership. The east keep was close enough that she could see the outline of the soldiers’ helmets as they hid behind
merlons
. “This is it,” she said.

“Are you certain?” Donovan asked.

“Yes. This is the same view I saw as a child. I entered the room from there,” she pointed to her left, to the long wall which held a dressing table and a wardrobe. “It must be behind the wardrobe.”

The men slid the wardrobe away from the wall, but nothing was there but plaster. “It is not here, Illianah,” Donovan said.

“It has to be. They must have re-plastered the entire wall.”

Donovan, Sir Tannin, and the other men accompanying them looked at her blankly as if she had just given them a supper plate without any food. She began running her hand along the wall, hoping to feel brick at the surface of the plaster, but the entire length of the wall felt the same. Her heart sank, but she could not let the men see her defeat. She glanced to the window again. This was the room. She was absolutely certain. “I need a spear,” she said.

Without questioning, one of the soldiers handed her a spear which she promptly began stabbing into the helpless wall. Each time she jabbed the spear into the plaster, the plaster would collapse and leave a hole as big as her fist. But the sixth time she stuck the spear into the wall, the tip of the spear did not submerge in the plaster; instead she heard a dull thunk. She hit the wall again and had the same result. “Here,” she said, handing the spear back to the soldier. Then she began to pull apart the fractured plaster with her hand.

And there, behind the plaster, was the brick.

She smiled to herself.

“Well done,” Donovan said, coming to aid her to remove the plaster.

With several more hands pitching in, the plaster was quickly removed. Since they did not have proper tools to remove the mortar from the bricks, swords, spears and daggers were used. It was as Illianah had said—the wall was taken down brick by brick, and much of it was done with her own hands.

Once a large enough hole was created for a man to climb through, a torch was lit and introduced into the passageway. Illianah’s skin crawled at first glance. The passageway was lined with cobwebs. She must have been a brave child, because crawling into that tunnel was the last thing Illianah would ever want to do now.

“We are about three hundred feet from the castle,” she said. “If I remember right, there is a steep decline at this end as we go beneath the wall. Then there are actually several hundred steps as we climb the tower to the king’s chambers.”

“Several hundred. Meaning we could fit one man on every stair?” Sir Tannin asked.

“Possibly. If needed.”

“I think we should get as many men into the castle as we can,” he replied.

“It will be difficult to get all those men into this house unnoticed,” Donovan said.

“We go into the passageway first,” Illianah said. “And we wait. Send the extra men to the house after dark, that way, if the unfortunate happens and they are discovered, we will still have access to the castle.”

It was quickly agreed upon. Two soldiers left to summon the aid of more rebels from the gatehouse at the city’s wall; the rest of their group entered the passageway. Illianah’s stomach felt like it was entwined with her rapidly beating heart. She was glad she was not the one holding the torch, or her men would have seen how badly she was shaking. Not only did the dewiness of the passageway and the small creatures she knew lived therein make her hair stand on end, there was the constant fear they would be discovered and not be able to escape this tomb.

They made their way up the tower and sat silently upon the stairs. No one needed to be reminded to be quiet, as even the smallest whisper would notify ears on the other side that something was amiss.

Illianah rested her head on Donovan’s shoulder. She inhaled his scent deeply and locked the memory of it within her heart. She did not have the comfort of knowing that she would be able to rest on his shoulder tomorrow or any day for that matter, but she felt selfish in worrying about her heart. Her citizens in the city of St. Moraine did not have homes they could return to. They had likely lost loved ones, possibly even children. Their mourning echoed in her heart. This had to be made right. They had fought to protest her death, and she must find a way of restoring their freedom.