𝑂𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙....
In a world of bloody war and misgivings that lead to treason, there is only one thing Catherine Percy can be sure of and that is danger.
Her life had not always been thus, f...
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~The Shadow of Tower~
Catherine and two year old Henry were taken from Westminster that very night; smuggled through the palace in silence with her brother and the Earl of Oxford leading her down dark passageways. Their shadowy figures danced on the walls, making them appear more monsters than men in the torchlight and she silently wished they had moved her in daylight.
They were her protectors in that moment but she almost felt they were her executioners, leading her in darkness to her death, to her doom. She shivered at the thought and clutched her boy close, once more swearing that she would not let one hair on his head be harmed.
Once the council's sentence had been read aloud again, she was escorted through a small arched doorway and down a set of narrow steps to the banks of the Thames where water lapped against the stone.
Upon the moonlit water, a small barge bobbed, laden with heavy furs Catherine wrapped around her boy as her brother helped her aboard.
"Godspeed, little Cate" He murmured and she returned his small nod, sending the same gesture to the Earl and trying to settle herself. There were no guards, no men offered for her protection, and as the barge pulled away from the palace, she felt herself yearning to return to shore.
It would have been a lie to deny that she felt a sense of growing unease as the barge sailed along the night. The world around was quiet, eerily so, the only sound being the gentle dip of wooden oars into water; the heavy breaths of the boatman as he worked. He did not speak one word and his haggard face was hidden beneath a cloak of jet black; a mortal Charon, she thought, remembering the purse of gold her brother passed to him before her departure.
Her heart quickened in her chest at the fresh memory and she clutched Henry a little tighter to her, watching the boatman with suspicious eyes. Had he been commanded to take she and her son to the next life? To find some means of taking their lives during the quiet of the night before casting their bodies to the grasp of the icy river below?
'No!' She thought and forced herself to shake her head in an attempt to rid the bleak expanse of her mind of such grisly thoughts. Her own brother would never seek to harm her nor his little nephew, his own flesh and blood, whatever the other Lords might feel! If anything that purse of gold would've been to secure her safety, the continuation of her life, not the end of it!
Once more, the wooden oars dipped into the Thames and the water rippled, shaking the shining picture of the night sky it held on it's surface. 'How quickly something so beautiful can be destroyed' She mused, watching as the moon turned to little more than a blurred ball of silvery light, it's curved edges obscured.
