"How many noblemen does it take to light a candle?" asked a
laughing voice.
Aidan O Donoghue lifted a hand to halt his escort. The
English voice intrigued him. In the crowded London street
behind him, his personal guard of a hundred gal-lowglass
instantly stopped their purposeful march.
"How many?" someone yelled.
"Three!" came the shout from the center of St. Paul's
churchyard.
Aidan nudged his horse forward into the area around the
great church. A sea of booksellers, paupers, tricksters,
merchants and rogues seethed around him. He could see the
speaker now, just barely, a little lightning bolt of mad
energy on the church steps.
"One to call a servant to pour the sackβ" she reeled in mock
drunkenness "βone to beat the servant senseless, one to
botch the job and one to blame it on the French."
Her listeners hooted in derision. Then a man yelled, "That's
four, wench!"
Aidan flexed his legs to stand in the stirrups.
Stirrups.
Until a fortnight ago, he had never even used such a device,
or a curbed bit, either. Perhaps, after all, there was some
use in this visit to England. He could do without all the
fancy draping Lord Lumley had insisted upon, though. Horses
were horses in Ireland, not poppet dolls dressed in satin
and plumes.
Elevated in the stirrups, he caught another glimpse of the
girl: battered hat crammed down on matted hair, dirty,
laughing face, ragged clothes.
"Well," she said to the heckler, "I never said I could
count, unless it be the coppers you toss me."
A sly-looking man in tight hose joined her on the steps. "I
saves me coppers for them what entertains me." Boldly he
snaked an arm around the girl and drew her snugly against him.
She slapped her hands against her cheeks in mock surprise.
"Sir! Your codpiece flatters my vanity!"
The clink of coins punctuated a spate of laughter. A fat man
near the girl held three flaming torches aloft. "Sixpence
says you can't juggle them."
"Ninepence says I can, sure as Queen Elizabeth's white arse
sits upon the throne," hollered the girl, deftly catching
the torches and tossing them into motion.
Aidan guided his horse closer still. The huge Florentine
mare he'd christened Grania earned a few dirty looks and
muttered curses from people she nudged out of the way, but
none challenged Aidan. Although the Londoners could not know
he was the O Donoghue MΓ³r of Ross Castle, they seemed to
sense that he and his horse were not a pair to be trifled
with. Perhaps it was the prodigious size of the horse;
perhaps it was the dangerous, wintry blue of the rider's
eyes; but most likely it was the naked blade of the
shortsword strapped to his thigh.
He left his massive escort milling outside the churchyard
and passing the time by intimidating the Londoners. When he
drew close to the street urchin, she was juggling the
torches. The flaming brands formed a whirling frame for her
grinning, sooty face.
She was an odd colleen, looking as if she had been stitched
together from leftovers: wide eyes and wider mouth, button
nose, and spiky hair better suited to a boy. She wore a
chemise without a bodice, drooping canion trews and boots so
old they might have been relics of the last century.
Yet her Maker had, by some foible, gifted her with the most
dainty and deft pair of hands Aidan had ever seen. Round and
round went the torches, and when she called for another, it
joined the spinning circle with ease. Hand to hand she
passed them, faster and faster. The big-bellied man then
tossed her a shiny red apple.
She laughed and said, "Eh, Dove, you don't fear I'll tempt a
man to sin?"
Her companion guffawed. "I like me wenches made of more than
gristle and bad jests, Pippa girl."
She took no offense, and while Aidan silently mouthed the
strange name, someone tossed a dead fish into the spinning mix.
Aidan cringed, but the girl called Pippa took the new
challenge in stride. "Seems I've caught one of your
relatives, Mort," she said to the man who had procured the fish.
The crowd roared its approval. A few red-heeled gentlemen
dropped coins upon the steps. Even after a fortnight in
London Aidan could ill understand the Sassenach. They would
as lief toss coins to a street performer as see her hanged
for vagrancy.
He felt something rub his leg and looked down. A
sleepy-looking whore curved her hand around his thigh,
fingers inching toward the horn-handled dagger tucked into
the top of his boot.
With a dismissive smile, Aidan removed the whore's hand.
"You'll find naught but ill fortune there, mistress."
She drew back her lips in a sneer. The French pox had begun
to rot her gums. "Irish," she said, backing away. "Chaste as
a priest, eh?"
Before he could respond, a high-pitched mew split the air,
and the mare's ears pricked up. Aidan spied a half-grown cat
flying through the air toward Pippa.
"Juggle
that," a man shouted, howling with laughter.
"Jesu!" she said. Her hands seemed to be working of their
own accord, keeping the objects spinning even as she tried
to step out of range of the flying cat. But she caught it
and managed to toss it from one hand to the next before the
terrified creature leaped onto her head and clung there,
claws sinking into the battered hat.
The hat slumped over the juggler's eyes, blinding her.
Torches, apple and fish all clattered to the ground. The
skinny man called Mort stomped out the flames. The fat man
called Dove tried to help but trod instead upon the slimy
fish. He skated forward, sleeves ripping as his pudgy arms
cartwheeled. Just as he lost his balance, his flailing fist
slammed into a spectator, who immediately threw himself into
the brawl. With shouts of glee, others joined the
fisticuffs. It was all Aidan could do to keep the mare from
rearing.
Still blinded by the cat, the girl stumbled forward, hands
outstretched. She caught the end of a bookseller's cart. Cat
and hat came off as one, and the crazed feline climbed a
stack of tomes, toppling them into the mud of the churchyard.
"Imbecile!" the bookseller screeched, lunging at Pippa.
Dove had taken on several opponents by now. With a wet
thwap, he slapped one across the face with the dead
fish.
Pippa grasped the end of the cart and lifted. The remaining
books slid down and slammed into the bookseller, knocking
him backward to the ground.
"Where's my ninepence?" she demanded, surveying the steps.
People were too busy brawling to respond. She snatched up a
stray copper and shoved it into the voluminous sack tied to
her waist with a frayed rope. Then she fled, darting toward
St. Paul's Cross, a tall monument surrounded by an open
rotunda. The bookseller followed, and now he had an allyβhis
wife, a formidable lady with arms like large hams.
"Come back here, you evil little monkey," the wife roared.
"This day shall be your last!"
Dove was enjoying the fight by now. He had his opponent by
the neck and was playing with the man's nose, slapping it
back and forth and laughing.
Mort, his companion, was equally gleeful, squaring off with
the whore who had approached Aidan earlier.
Pippa led a chase around the cross, the bookseller and his
wife in hot pursuit.
More spectators joined in the fray. The horse backed up,
eyes rolling in fear. Aidan made a crooning sound and
stroked her neck, but he did not leave the square. He simply
watched the fight and thought, for the hundredth time since
his arrival, what a strange, foul and fascinating place
London was. Just for a moment, he forgot the reason he had
come. He turned spectator, giving his full attention to the
antics of Pippa and her companions.
So this was St. Paul's, the throbbing heart of the city. It
was more meeting place than house of worship to be sure, and
this did not surprise Aidan. The Sassenach were a people who
clung feebly to an anemic faith; all the passion and
pageantry had been bled out of the church by the Rome-hating
Reformers.
The steeple, long broken but never yet repaired, shadowed a
collection of beggars and merchants, strolling players and
thieves, whores and tricksters. At the opposite corner of
the square stood a gentleman and a liveried constable.
Prodded by the screeched urging of the bookseller's wife,
they reluctantly moved in closer. The bookseller had
cornered Pippa on the top step.
"Mort!" she cried. "Dove, help me!" Her companions promptly
disappeared into the crowd. "Bastards!" she yelled after
them. "Geld and splay you both!"
The bookseller barreled toward her. She stooped and picked
up the dead fish, took keen aim at the bookseller and let fly.
The bookseller ducked. The fish struck the approaching
gentleman in the face. Leaving slime and scales in its wake,
the fish slid down the front of his silk brocade doublet and
landed upon his slashed velvet court slippers.
Pippa froze and gawked in horror at the gentleman. "Oops,"
she said.
"Indeed." He fixed her with a fiery eye of accusation.
Without even blinking, he motioned to the liveried constable.
"Sir," he said.
"Aye, my lord?"
"Arrest this, er,
rodent."
Pippa took a step back, praying the way was clear to make a
run for it. Her backside collided with the solid bulk of the
bookseller's wife.
"Oops," Pippa said again. Her hopes sank like a weighted
corpse in the Thames.
"Let's see you worm your way out of
this fix,
missy," the woman hissed in her ear.
"Thank you," Pippa said cordially enough. "I intend to do
just that." She put on her brightest I'm-an-urchin grin and
tugged at a forelock. She had recently hacked off her hair
to get rid of a particularly stubborn case of lice. "Good
morrow, Your Worship."
The nobleman stroked his beard. "Not particularly good for
you, scamp," he said. "Are you aware of the laws against
strolling players?"
Her gaze burning with indignation, she looked right and
left. "Strolling players?" she said with heated outrage.
"Who? Where? To God, what is this city coming to that such
vermin as strolling players would run loose in the streets?"
As she huffed up her chest, she furtively searched the crowd
for Dove and Mortlock. Like the fearless gallants she knew
them to be, her companions had vanished.
For a moment, her gaze settled on the man on the horse. She
had noticed him earlier, richly garbed and well mounted,
with a foreign air about him she could not readily place.
"You mean to say," the constable yelled at her, "that
you are not a strolling player?"
"Sir, bite your tongue," she fired off. "I'mβ¦ I amβ¦" She
took a deep breath and plucked out a ready falsehood. "An
evangelist, my lord. Come to preach the Good Word to the
unconverted of St. Paul's."
The haughty gentleman lifted one eyebrow high. "The Good
Word, eh? And what might that be?"
"You know," she said with an excess of patience. "The gospel
according to Saint John." She paused, searching her memory
for more tidbits gleaned from days she had spent huddled and
hiding in church. An inveterate collector of colorful words
and phrases, she took pride in using them. "The pistol of
Saint Paul to the fossils."
"Ah." The constable's hands shot out. In a swift movement,
he pinned her to the wall beside the
si quis door.
She twisted around to look longingly into the nave where the
soaring stone pillars marched along Paul's Walk. Like a
well-seasoned rat, she knew every cranny and cubbyhole of
the church. If she could get inside, she could find another
way out.
"You'd best do better than that," the constable said, "else
I'll nail your foolish ears to the stocks."
She winced just thinking about it. "Very well, then." She
heaved a dramatic sigh. "Here's the truth."
A small crowd had gathered, probably hoping to see nails
driven through her ears. The stranger on horseback
dismounted, passed his reins to a stirrup runner and drew
closer.
The lust for blood was universal, Pippa decided. But perhaps
not. Despite his savage-looking face and flowing black hair,
the man had an air of reckless splendor that fascinated her.
She took a deep breath. "Actually, sir, I
am a
strolling player. But I have a nobleman's warrant," she
finished triumphantly.
"Have you, then?" His Lordship winked at the constable.
"Oh, aye, sir, upon my word." She hated it when gentlemen
got into a playful mood. Their idea of play usually involved
mutilating defenseless people or animals.
"And who might this patron be?"
"Why, Robert Dudley himself, the Earl of Leicester." Pippa
threw back her shoulders proudly. How clever of her to think
of the queen's perpetual favorite. She nudged the constable
in the ribs, none too gently. "He's the queen's lover, you
know, so you'd best not irritate me."
A few of her listeners' mouths dropped open. The nobleman's
face drained to a sick gray hue; then hot color surged to
his cheeks and jowls.
The constable gripped Pippa by the ear. "You lose, rodent."
With a flourish, he indicated the haughty man.
"That
is the Earl of Leicester, and I don't believe he's ever
seen you before."
"If I had, I would certainly remember," said Leicester.
She swallowed hard. "Can I change my mind?"
"Please do," Leicester invited.
"My patron is actually Lord Shelbourne." She eyed the men
dubiously. "Er, he
is still among the living, is he
not?"
"Oh, indeed."
Pippa breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, then. He is my
patron. Now I had best be goβ"
"Not so fast." The grip on her ear tightened. Tears burned
her nose and eyes. "He is locked up in the Tower, his lands
forfeit and his title attainted."
Pippa gasped. Her mouth formed an O.
"I know," said Leicester. "Oops."
For the first time, her aplomb flagged. Usually she was
nimble enough of wit and fleet enough of foot to get out of
these scrapes. The thought of the stocks loomed large in her
mind. This time, she was nailed indeed.
She decided to try a last ditch effort to gain a patron.
Who? Lord Burghley? No, he was too old and humorless.
Walsingham? No, not with his Puritan leanings. The queen
herself, then. By the time Pippa's claim could be verified,
she would be long gone.
Then she spied the tall stranger looming at the back of the
throng. Though he was most certainly foreign, he watched her
with an interest that might even be colored by sympathy.
Perhaps he spoke no English.
"Actually," she said,
"he is my patron." She
pointed in the direction of the foreigner. Be Dutch, she
prayed silently. Or Swiss. Or drunk. Or stupid. Just play along.
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