Midwinter Nightingale by Joan Aiken

making trouble from one day's end to the next. He was a terrible boy”
    “He was that! Until the king would have no more of him, and Lady Adelaide converted her own childhood home into a school and had Lothar dispatched there, to the great relief of all at Court. But now the boy has bought up the place with his evil father's money, and I've nae doubt turned the school into a nest of conspirators. I have heard—from my sources—that the duchess of Burgundy plans to go there.”
    “And that is bad news?”
    “She is one of Richard's bitterest enemies. Not only did she once hope to marry him herself—much chance the ill-visaged cateran ever had—but she claims that she herself has a right to the throne by her descent from my brother Henry, which is nothing but bare-faced impudence, for her great-great-great-grandmother, Polly Stone, was naught but a milkmaid and one of Henry's passing fancies— What was I saying?”
    “That Fogrum Hall is full of the king's enemies.” “Ay. That it is. And you, my boy, must paint his portrait and rid his mind of its cares and ease him to his latter end before they discover his whereabouts and come rampaging here to cut up his peace.”

conscious again, she thought at first that she was back in the ship, because everything seemed to be swaying about so. But then, as she began to gather her wits together, she realized that the regular sound she could hear was the clip-clop of horses' hooves.
    That's rum, she thought. I'm in a carriage, but how did I get here? It ain't Podge's curricle, for I'd feel the wind a-blowing, and I don't. Whose rig is it, and who stowed me here?
    The next thing she discovered, when she tried to put this question to somebody, was that her mouth was stuffed full of cloth, with a bandage tied over it; and when, indignantly, she tried to remove the bandage, she found that her hands were tightly bound with rope. In fact, thought Dido crossly, I've been scrobbled like asimple, green ninny. Now, who can have done that? And where the plague are they taking me?
    Since nobody was at hand prepared to give her this information, Dido very sensibly decided that she might as well go back to sleep. It was dark and the carriage blinds were down, so there was nothing to be learned from looking out the windows. But before sleeping she went on a mental quest, rummaging in her memory for any recent event that might have some connection with this abduction.
    First I was on the ship coming in to dock in the Port of London. Then I was whistled off the ship by a cove in a boat. Then I was picked up by Podge Greenaway in his curricle and taken to collogue with old Reverence Archbishop Whitgift with his plate of cucumber sandwiches. Aha! Now we're coming to the wishbone! His old Nibs wanted me to tell him—croopus,
that's
it—he was a-telling me that they've lost the king, poor old King Dick—yes—and Simon was missing too, and the king's office coves wanted to ask me if I'd any notion where the pair of them might be….
    That's it! The coves who have pinched me likely want to ask the same question! But they sure are barking up the wrong cuppa, for I don't know the answer. So they can put that in their hubble-bubble and smoke it. But, thought Dido, itd do no harm to lead em on a mite, maybe, and let on that maybe I do know, but I ain't telling; that way might give Simon and His Poor Old Majesty a mite of breathing time.
    The very last thing that passed through Dido's mind came in the form of a vague dreamy question: Did Simon once tell me something …that King Dick had once said to him …about a place in a hidden corner of a dark, tangled wood with a lake where a whole bunch of nightingales sang …his favorite place? From way back when he was a boy?
    Then she was asleep.
    The next time Dido woke, it was because she had been roused by a considerable clatteration of horse hooves, whinnies, and a chorus of dogs barking and raucous male voices. The carriage was at a standstill, but