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Evan turned around to face his brother and sister, blinking a little at the room's light. "Think about it. If some murderer broke in right now and killed us, how would we know who sent him? You think he's going to stop and say, this murder courtesy of the Duke of Gloucester, or Richard III, or something like that?"
"So, if Edward thought Richard III wanted to kill him," Jess said slowly, "and someone came to murder him, he'd just assume Richard was guilty."
"I think you're both crazy," said Trent. "If Richard didn't kill them, why didn't King Henry do something tight away?"
"Maybe he did," Evan said. "Maybe he killed them, then waited so long to say that Richard had murdered the Princes because he didn't want any kind of investigation that might find them out. And remember, Dickon didn't say that Richard III was guilty. I don't think he's convinced."
"Maybe," Trent said, glaring at Evan, "your friend Dickon just likes arguing with his big brother."
Evan wrinkled his noise and seemed just about to say something when lightning exploded in jagged white fingers across the cloudy sky, and thunder rattled the windows behind him. Evan jumped into the light of the room.
"Look at that storm," Trent said, impressed.
"Are you kids all right up there?" their mother called, her voice floating up the stairs to them.
Trent swung off the bed and went over to open the bedroom door. "Fine, Mom," he called out.
Without warning another vivid bolt of lightning flashed outside and the electricity went off. Mrs. Cooper shrieked in the sudden darkness, then the lights blinked back on and everybody relaxed.
"Just the lightning, kids," their father called. "You can come down here with us if you want."
Jess shook her head as Trent glanced back, his eyebrows raised. He shouted downstairs, "No thanks, we're fine up here."
"Got your flashlights, just in case?"
"Yeah. We're all set."
"Okay. Give us a yell if you need anything,"
"We will."
Trent pushed the door shut and looked out at the storm.
"Wow," Evan said, his eyes huge. "It's almost like there's something angry out there, trying to get inside."
"That's not funny," Jess said, and Trent strode across the room to jerk the curtains shut across the window. "There, that's better, isn't it?"
The lights went out again.
This time they stayed out, and Trent fumbled to find the flashlight and turn it on. In the sickly yellow halo of light, the three of them stared at one another.
"I'm going to bed," Jess announced.
Evan nodded vigorously. "Sounds like a good idea."
Jess felt her way to her room, shouted good night to her parents, and struggled into her pajamas in the dim beam from her own flashlight. She switched it off and laid it by her pillow, then pulled the cover up over her head. Even inside the stuffy cocoon of blankets, she tossed and turned unhappily. She had hooked the curtain across the skylight, but it failed to shut out the brilliant bursts of lightning, and she felt as though the rain drumming against the glass were beating down on top of her. Jess wished she were back home in Austin, away from the wind and the rain and the cold, back where it was warm and she had friends - and where eerie voices didn't talk to her from stained glass pictures. She burrowed deeper into the bedclothes.
Neddy and the other ghosts weren't really her friends. She could hear Edward's ghost accusing her of being on Gloucester's side. Neddy had said plenty about his father being innocent, but he'd never said a word about being her friend, just complained about being homesick like she was. Probably his father had murdered the Princes after all.
Echoing distantly in the roar of the thunder, Jess heard a faint, rumbling voice. "None of them are your friends, none of them. Why should you help them?"
Jess muttered into her pillow, "Neddy wants to go home to Middleham."
"And you want to go home, too," the voice whispered, rising in the wind. "How would prying into their memories help you to go home? None of them would help you."
Jess shook her head fretfully against the storm's anger. "No, that's not fair - they would -"
"No!" the voice howled as the wind and rain beat against the skylight. "They think you are on their murderer's side anyhow - Gloucester.... "
"I'm not!" Jess cried, shoving back the blankets and glaring up at her skylight. "Stop it! Just shut up! Who are you, anyway? Tell me!"
"A friend."
The old hook must have pulled out of the window frame, because the curtain now hung free and swayed loosely in the icy draft. Through the uncovered skylight, Jess could see a vague form taking shape in the lightning flashes, a dark form, bending down toward her out of the night. That bent back - some people said Richard III was a hunchback....Jess sensed a monstrous evil coming at her. She groped beside her pillow and felt her flashlight roll off the bed. A moment later, it cracked against the wooden floor.
"I am your friend," the soft voice repeated insistently. "I want you to go home."
"No," Jess cried. "You're not my friend - you're - ""Go home!" the voice thundered, shaking the walls around her.
"You're Gloucester!" she screamed.
"Go home!"
With a loud crash the skylight shattered. Jess shrieked and threw her arms over her face to protect herself from the hail of glass and rain.
Copyright ©1994 by Elaine Marie Alphin