As he made his way down the stone steps, he was greeted by the clatter of boots ascending and the light of another lantern. William Osborne appeared, his youthful face and intelligent grey eyes unsettled. Mayhew contemptuously wondered if he now regretted giving up his promising career in the law to join the Queen's Service out of love for his country, not realising what would be asked of him.

"What is it?" Mayhew demanded.

"A disturbance. At the Traitors' Gate."

Where the river lights were heading, Mayhew thought. "The gate remains secure, and well guarded?" he asked.

Osborne's face loomed white in the lamplight. "There are six men upon it, as our Lord Walsingham demanded."

"And yet?"

Osborne's voice quavered with uncertainty. "The guards say the restraining beam moves of its own accord. Bolts draw without the help of human hand. Is this what we always feared?"

Pushing past him with irritation, Mayhew snapped, "You know as well as I that the Tower is protected. These guards are frighted like maidens." For all his contempt at his colleague's words, Mayhew's chest tightened in apprehension.

Walsingham said it could never happen, he reminded himself. He told the queen… Burghley…

Trying to maintain his decorum, he descended to the ground floor with studied nonchalance and stepped out into the Inmost Ward. The whitewashed walls of the Tower glowed in the lantern light.

"Listen!" Osborne's features flared in the gloom as he raised his lantern to illuminate the way ahead.

The steady silence of the Tower was shattered by a cacophony of roars and howls, barks, shrieks, and high-pitched chattering. In the Royal Menagerie, the lions, leopards, and lynxes threw themselves around their pens, while the other exotic beasts tore at the mud of their enclosures in a frenzy.

"What do they sense?" There was a querulous tremble in Osborne's voice.