Warden of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book 8) by Sarah Woodbury Page B

before, and a telegraph line was in our future. But not yet, and even if we did have it, odds were it wouldn’t have run from Canterbury to Tonbridge.
    Meanwhile, I’d spent the day in conference with my advisers and cabinet, preparing for the possibility of war. The logistics were ridiculous. Just feeding the thousands of men I’d have to bring across the channel took an army of cooks. Weapons, ships, siege engines—not to mention strategy—all had to be worked out. The pope was not going to be pleased. And even if the preparations were a complicated bluff, it had to look real. It had to be more than talk and pretense, and that meant some serious activity on our part.
    If Acquasparta had spies at Canterbury Castle, I wanted them to be reporting to him that I was going to war. I wanted him to be lying awake staring up at the ceiling too.
    I pulled on my breeches and boots, since stone floors are really cold on the feet, tucked in my shirt, and threw the warm black cloak I’d worn to the Archbishop’s palace around my shoulders.
    Before leaving the room, I poked my nose through the doorway to where Arthur slept in an adjacent room. My three-year-old son lay tucked up in his big bed, as befitted the future King of England. His nanny slept on a trundle bed beside him. Most nights, he ended up in our room anyway, wiggling under the covers between Lili and me. It was early enough that he hadn’t yet woken. I was thinking it must be somewhere around two in the morning. I’d lain awake a long while, but we still had some hours before dawn.
    “Sire.” The guard on duty outside my door bowed as I passed him.
    “As you were,” I said.
    Another guard stood at the top of the stairs at the end of the corridor. At the sight of me coming towards him, he disappeared, only to return almost immediately. I knew what he was doing: the word would be spreading throughout the keep that the king was awake and on the move. It wasn’t fair that everyone else had to be awake when I was, which was why I hadn’t left my room earlier.
    The monarchy had all sorts of hereditary and appointed offices, many of which were really cabinet members—the Lord High Treasurer, for instance, or the Lord High Chancellor. Clare, Bohun, Mortimer, Callum, and Carew all had their places. They didn’t serve in the royal household, however—though if the king was awake at two in the morning, certain companions might show up. As King of England, I had remarkably little authority over my own household, and whenever I tried to change these kinds of details, I only ended up hurting the feelings of the people whose job it was to be awake. I felt guilty about waking the castle, but not enough to return to bed.
    At least I’d managed to dress myself without Jeeves, my manservant, but even as I thought that, Jeeves hustled down the hall towards me, straightening his soft hat. “Sire.” He bowed deeply. “What do you require?”
    “I require you to go back to sleep,” I said. “How am I to trust your assessment of my attire if I know you’re operating on half a night’s sleep?”
    “My lord—”
    “Go, Jeeves. I’m fine. Just off to do a little paperwork.”
    “Yes, sire.” Jeeves bowed and backed away. I hoped he would actually sleep, but more likely he’d lie down fully dressed to await events.
    The square keep of Canterbury Castle stood six stories high, with towers on the corners adding the last level to the battlement. The exterior was all stone, but the interior was constructed in wood, which made the whole structure far more comfortable than it would have been had the castle been built all in stone. The corridors and stairs were built inside the eleven-foot-thick walls, allowing passage from room to room. The toilets (sometimes called garderobes ) were in the walls too, accessible usually by an offset hallway in an attempt keep the smell contained and discourage it from wafting into the corridors.
    Great wooden beams supported each ceiling and