At The Queen's Summons

“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’m…I am…” 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 go—”

“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.