At the Queen's Summons (3 page)

“That is a lie,” Aidan said mildly.

“A week?”

“Also a lie.”

“Since last night?” she said.

“That I am likely to believe. You do not need to lie to win my sympathy.”

“It's a habit, like spitting. Sorry.”

“Where can I get you a hearty meal, colleen?”

Her eyes danced with anticipation. “Oh, there, Your Greatness.” She pointed across the way, past the 'Change, where armed guards flanked a chest of bullion. “The Nag's Head Inn has good pies and they don't water down their ale.”

“Done.” He strode into the middle of the road. A few market carts jostled past. A herd of laughing, filthy children charged past in pursuit of a runaway pig, and a noisome knacker's wagon, piled high with butchered horse parts, lumbered by. When at last the way seemed clear, Aidan grabbed Pippa's hand and hurried her across.

“Now,” he said, ducking beneath the low lintel of the doorway and drawing her inside. “Here we are.”

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. The tavern was nearly full despite the early hour. He took Pippa to a scarred table flanked by a pair of three-legged stools.

He called for food and drink. The alewife slumped lazily by the fire as if loath to bestir herself. In high dudgeon, Pippa marched over to her. “Did you not hear His Lordship? He desires to be served now.” Puffed up with self-importance, she pointed out his rich mantle and the tunic beneath, decked in cut crystal points. The sight of a well-turned-out patron spurred the woman to bring the ale and pasties quickly.

Pippa picked up her wooden drinking mug and drained nearly half of it, until he rapped on the bottom. “Slowly now. It won't sit well on an empty stomach.”

“If I drink enough, my stomach won't care.” She set down the mug and dragged her sleeve across her mouth.
A certain glazed brightness came over her eyes, and he felt a welling of discomfort, for it had not been his purpose to make her stupid with drink.

“Eat something,” he urged her. She gave him a vague smile and picked up one of the pies. She ate methodically and without savor. The Sassenach were terrible cooks, Aidan thought, not for the first time.

A hulking figure filled the doorway and plunged the tavern deeper into darkness. Aidan's hand went for his dagger; then he remembered the girl still had it.

As soon as the newcomer stepped inside, Aidan grinned and relaxed. He would need no weapon against this man.

“Come sit you down, Donal Og,” he said in Gaelic, dragging a third stool to the table.

Aidan was known far and wide as a man of prodigious size, but his cousin dwarfed him. Donal Og had massive shoulders, legs like tree trunks and a broad, prominent brow that gave him the look of a simpleton. Nothing was farther from the truth. Donal Og was brilliant, wry and unfailingly loyal to Aidan.

Pippa stopped chewing to gape at him.

“This is Donal Og,” said Aidan. “The captain of my guard.”

“Donal Og,” she repeated, her pronunciation perfect.

“It means Donal the Small,” Donal Og explained.

Her gaze measured his height. “Where?”

“I was so dubbed at birth.”

“Ah. That explains everything.” She smiled broadly. “I am honored. My name is Pippa Trueblood.”

“The honor is my own, surely,” Donal Og said with faint irony in his voice.

Aidan frowned. “I thought you said Trueheart.”

She laughed. “Silly me. Perhaps I did.” She began licking grease and crumbs from her fingers.

“Where,” Donal Og asked in Gaelic, “did you find
that?”

“St. Paul's churchyard.”

“The Sassenach will let
anyone
in their churches, even lunatics.” Donal Og held out a hand, and the alewife served him a mug of ale. “Is she as crazy as she looks?”

Aidan kept a bland, pleasant smile on his face so the girl would not guess what they spoke of. “Probably.”

“Are you Dutch?” she asked suddenly. “That language you're using to discuss me—is it Dutch? Or Norse, perhaps?”

Aidan laughed. “It is Gaelic. I thought you knew. We're Irish.”

Her eyes widened.
“Irish.
I'm told the Irish are wild and fierce and more papist than the pope himself.”

Donal Og chuckled. “You're right about the wild and fierce part.”

She leaned forward with interest burning in her eyes. Aidan gamely ran a hand through his hair. “You'll see I have no antlers, so you can lay to rest that myth. If you like, I'll show you that I have no tail—”

“I believe you,” she said quickly.

“Don't tell her about the blood sacrifices,” Donal Og warned.

She gasped. “Blood sacrifices?”

“Not lately,” Aidan concluded, his face deadly serious.

“Certainly not on a waning moon,” Donal Og added.

But Pippa held herself a bit more stiffly and regarded them with wariness. She seemed to be measuring the distance from table to door with an expert eye. Aidan had the impression that she was quite accustomed to making swift escapes.

The alewife, no doubt drawn by the color of their money, sidled over with more brown ale. “Did ye know
we're Irish, ma'am?” Pippa asked in a perfect imitation of Aidan's brogue.

The alewife's brow lifted. “Do tell!”

“I'm a nun, see,” Pippa explained, “of the Order of Saint Dorcas of the Sisters of Virtue. We never forget a favor.”

Suitably impressed, the alewife curtsied with new respect and withdrew.

“So,” Aidan said, sipping his ale and hiding his amusement at her little performance. “We are Irish and you cannot decide on a family name for yourself. How is it that you came to be a strolling player in St. Paul's?”

Donal Og muttered in Gaelic, “Really, my lord, could we not just leave? Not only is she crazy, she's probably crawling with vermin. I'm sure I just saw a flea on her.”

“Ah, that's a sad tale indeed,” Pippa said. “My father was a great war hero.”

“Which war?” Aidan asked.

“Which war do you suppose, my lord?”

“The Great Rebellion?” he guessed.

She nodded vigorously, her hacked-off hair bobbing. “The very one.”

“Ah,” said Aidan. “And your father was a hero, you say?”

“You're as giddy as she,” grumbled Donal Og, still speaking Irish.

“Indeed he was,” Pippa declared. “He saved a whole garrison from slaughter.” A faraway look pervaded her eyes like morning mist. She looked past him, out the open door, at a patch of the sky visible between the gabled roofs of London. “He loved me more than life itself, and he wept when he had to leave me. Ah, that was a bleak day for the Truebeard family.”

“True
heart,
” Aidan corrected, curiously moved. The
story was as false as a strumpet's promise, yet the yearning he heard in the girl's voice rang true.

“Trueheart,” she agreed easily. “I never saw my father again. My mother was carried off by pirates, and I was left quite alone to fend for myself.”

“I've heard enough,” said Donal Og. “Let's go.”

Aidan ignored him. He found himself fascinated by the girl, watching as she helped herself to more ale and drank greedily, as if she would never get her fill.

Something about her touched him in a deep, hidden place he had long kept closed. It was in the very heart of him, embers of warmth that he guarded like a windbreak around a herdsman's fire. No one was allowed to share the inner life of Aidan O Donoghue. He had permitted that just once—and he had been so thoroughly doused that he had frozen himself to sentiment, to trust, to joy, to hope—to everything that made life worth living.

Now here was this strange woman, unwashed and underfed, with naught but her large soft eyes and her vivid imagination to shield her from the harshness of the world. True, she was strong and saucy as any rollicking street performer, but not too far beneath the gamine surface, he saw something that fanned at the banked embers inside him. She possessed a subtle, waiflike vulnerability that was, at least on the surface, at odds with her saucy mouth and nail-hard shell of insouciance.

And, though her hair and face and ill-fitting garments were smeared with grease and ashes, a charming, guileless appeal shone through.

“That is quite a tale of woe,” Aidan commented.

Her smile favored them both like the sun bursting through stormclouds.

“Too bad it's a pack of lies,” Donal Og said.

“I do wish you'd speak English,” she said. “It's bad
manners to leave me out.” She glared accusingly at him. “But I suppose, if you're going to say I'm crazy and a liar and things of that sort, it is probably best to speak Irish.”

Seeing so huge a man squirm was an interesting spectacle. Donal Og shifted to and fro, causing the stool to creak. His hamlike face flushed to the ears. “Aye, well,” he said in English, “you need not perform for Aidan and me. For us, the truth is good enough.”

“I see.” She elongated her words as the effects of the ale flowed through her. “Then I should indeed confess the truth and tell you exactly who I am.”

I
t is a mother's lot to rejoice and to grieve all at once. So it has always been, but knowing that has never eased my grief nor dimmed my joy.

In the early part of her reign, the queen gave our family a land grant in County Kerry, Munster, but until recently, we kept it in name only, content to leave Ireland to the Irish. Now, quite suddenly, we are expected to do something about it.

Today my son Richard received a royal commission. I wonder, when the queen's advisers empowered my son to lead an army, if they ever, even for an instant, imagined him as I knew him—a laughing small boy with grass stains on his elbows and the pure sweetness of an innocent heart shining from his eyes.

Ah, to me it seems only yesterday that I held that silky, golden head to my breast and scandalized all society by sending away the wet nurse.

Now they want him to lead men into battle for lands he never asked for, a cause he never embraced.

My heart sighs, and I tell myself to cling to the blessings that are mine: a loving husband, five grown children
and a shining faith in God that—only once, long ago—went dim.

—Lark de Lacey,
Countess of Wimberleigh

“I
can't believe you brought her with us,” said Donal Og the next day, pacing in the walled yard of the old Priory of the Crutched Friars.

As a visiting dignitary, Aidan had been given the house and adjacent priory by Lord Lumley, a staunch Catholic and unlikely but longtime royal favorite. The residence was in Aldgate, where all men of consequence lived while in London. The huge residence, once home to humble and devout clerks, comprised a veritable village, including a busy glassworks and a large yard and stables. It was oddly situated, bordered by broad Woodroffe Lane and crooked Hart Street and within shouting distance of a grim, skeletal scaffold and gallows.

Aidan had given Pippa a room of her own, one of the monks' cells facing a central arcade. The soldiers had strict orders to watch over her, but not to threaten or disturb her.

“I couldn't very well leave her at the Nag's Head.” He glanced at the closed door of her cell. “She might've been accosted.”

“She probably
has
been, probably makes her living at
it.” Donal Og cut the air with an impatient gesture of his hand. “You take in strays, my lord, you always have—orphaned lambs, pups rejected by their dams, lame horses. Creatures better left—” He broke off, scowled and resumed pacing.

“To die,” Aidan finished for him.

Donal Og swung around, his expression an odd mix of humanity and cold pragmatism. “It is the very rhythm of nature for some to struggle, some to survive, some to perish. We're Irish, man. Who knows that better than we? Neither you nor I can change the world. Nor were we meant to.”

“But isn't that what we came to London to accomplish, cousin?” Aidan asked softly.

“We came because Queen Elizabeth summoned you,” Donal Og snapped. “And now that we're here, she refuses to see you.” He tilted his great blond head skyward and addressed the clouds. “Why?”

“It amuses her to keep foreign dignitaries cooling their heels, waiting for an audience.”

“I think she's insulted because you go all about town with an army of one hundred. Mayhap a little more modesty would be in order.”

Iago came out of the barracks, scratching his bare, ritually scarred chest and yawning. “Talk, talk, talk,” he said in the lilting tones of his native island. “You never shut up.”

Aidan said a perfunctory good morning to his marshal. Through an extraordinary chain of events, Iago had come ten years earlier from the West Indies of the New World. His mother was of mixed island native and African blood, his father a Spaniard.

Iago and Aidan had grown to full manhood together. Two years younger than Iago and in awe of the Carib
bean man's strength and prowess, Aidan had insisted on emulating him. Gloriously drunk one day, he had endured the ritual scarring ceremony in secret, and in a great deal of pain. To the horror of his father, Aidan now bore, like Iago, a series of V-shaped scars down the center of his chest.

“I was just saying,” Donal Og explained, “that Aidan is always taking in strays.”

Iago laughed deeply, his mahogany face shining through the morning mist. “What a fool, eh?”

Chastened, Donal Og fell silent.

“So what did he drag home this time?” Iago asked.

 

Pippa lay perfectly still with her eyes closed, playing a familiar game. From earliest memory, she always awoke with the certain conviction that her life had been a nightmare and, upon awakening, she would find matters the way they should be, with her mother smiling like a Madonna while her father worshipped her on bended knee and both smiled upon their beloved daughter.

With a snort of self-derision, she beat back the fantasy. There was no place in her life for dreams. She opened her eyes and looked up to see a cracked, limewashed ceiling. Timber and wattled walls. The scent of slightly stale, crushed straw. The murmur of masculine voices outside a thick timber door.

It took a few moments to remember all that had happened the day before. While she reflected on the events, she found a crock of water and a basin and cupped her hands for a drink, finally plunging in her face to wash away the last cobwebby vestiges of her fantasies.

Yesterday had started out like any other day—a few antics in St. Paul's; then she and Mortlock and Dove would cut a purse or filch something to eat from a carter.
Like London smoke borne on a breeze, they would drift aimlessly through the day, then return to the house on Maiden Lane squished between two crumbling tenements.

Pippa had the attic room all to herself. Almost. She shared it with a rather aggressively inquisitive rat she called, for no reason she could fathom, Pavlo. She also shared quarters with all the private worries and dreamlike memories and unfocused sadness she refused to confess to any other person.

Yesterday, the free-flowing course of her life had altered. For better or worse, she knew not. She felt no ties to Mort and Dove; the three of them used each other, shared what they had to, and jealously guarded the rest. If they missed her at all, it was because she had a knack for drawing a crowd. If she missed them at all—she had not decided whether or not she did—it was because they were familiar, not necessarily beloved.

Pippa knew better than to love anyone.

She had come with the Irish nobleman simply because she had nothing better to do. Perhaps fate had taken a hand in her fortune at last. She had always wanted the patronage of a rich man, but no one had ever taken notice of her. In her more fanciful moments, she thought about winning a place at court. For now, she would settle for the Celtic lord.

After all, he was magnificently handsome, obviously rich and surprisingly kind.

A girl could do far worse than that.

By the time he had brought her to this place, she had been woozy with ale. She had a vague memory of riding a large horse with the O Donoghue Mór seated in front of her and all his strange, foreign warriors tramping behind.

She made certain her shabby sack of belongings lay in a corner of the room, then dried her face. As she cleaned her teeth with the tail of her shift dipped in the water basin, she saw, wavering in the bottom of the bowl, a coat of arms.

Norman cross and hawk and arrows.

Lumley's device. She knew it well, because she had once stolen a silver badge from him as he had passed through St. Paul's.

She straightened up and combed her fingers through her hacked-off hair. She did not miss having long hair, but once in a while she thought about looking fashionable, like the glorious ladies who went about in barges on the Thames. In the past, when she bothered to wash her hair, it had hung in honey gold waves that glistened in the sun.

A definite liability. Men noticed glistening golden hair. And that was the last sort of attention she wanted.

She jammed on her hat—it was a slouch of brown wool that had seen better days—and wrenched open the door to greet the day.

Morning mist lay like a shroud over a rambling courtyard. Men and dogs and horses slipped in and out of view like wraiths. The fog insulated noise, and the arcade created soft, hollow echoes, so that the Irish voices of the men had an eerie intimacy.

She tucked her thumbs into her palms to ward off evil spirits—just in case.

Several yards from Pippa, three men stood talking in low tones. They made a most interesting picture—the O Donoghue with his blue mantle slung back over one shoulder, his booted foot propped on the tongue of a wagon, and his elbow braced upon his knee.

Donal Og, the rude cousin, leaned against the wagon
wheel, gesticulating like a man in the grips of St. Elmo's fire. The third man stood with his back turned, feet planted wide as if he were on the deck of a ship. He was tall—she wondered if prodigious height was a required quality of the Irish lord's retinue—and his long, soft tunic blazed with color in hues more vivid than April flowers.

She strolled out of her chamber to find that it was one of a long line of barracks or cells hunched against an ancient wall and shaded by the arcade. She walked over to the wagon, and in her usual forthright manner, she picked up the hem of the man's color-drenched garment and fingered the fabric.

“Now, colleen,” Aidan O Donoghue said in a warning voice.

The man in the bright cloak turned.

Pippa's mouth dropped open. A squeak burst from her throat and she stumbled back. Her heel caught on a broken paving stone. She tripped and landed on her backside in a puddle of morning-chilled mud.

“Jesus Christ on a flaming crutch!” she said.

“Reverent, isn't she?” Donal Og asked wryly. “Faith, but she's a perfect little saint.”

Pippa kept staring.
This
was a Moor. She had heard about them in story and song, but never had she seen one. His face was remarkable, a gleaming sculpture of high cheekbones, a bony jaw, beautiful mouth, eyes the color of the stoutest ale. He had a perfect black cloud of hair, and skin the color of antique, polished leather.

“My name is Iago,” he said, stepping back and twitching the hem of his remarkable cloak out of the way of the mud.

“Pippa,” she said breathlessly. “Pippa True—True—”

Aidan stuck out his hand and pulled her to her feet. She felt his smooth, easy strength as he did so, and his
touch was a wonder to her, in its way, more of a wonder than the Moor's appearance.

Iago looked from Pippa to Aidan. “My lord, you have outdone yourself.”

She felt the mud slide down her backside and legs, pooling in the tops of her ancient boots. Last winter, she had stolen them from a corpse lying frozen in an alley.

“Will you eat or bathe first?” the O Donoghue asked, not unkindly.

Her stomach cramped, but she was well used to hunger pangs. The chill mud made her shiver. “A bath, I suppose, Your Reverence.”

Donal Og and Iago grinned at each other. “Your Reverence,” Iago said in his deep, musical voice.

Donal Og pointed his toe and bowed. “Your Reverence.”

Aidan ignored them. “A bath it is, then,” he said.

“I've never had one before.”

The O Donoghue looked at her for a long moment. His gaze burned over her, searing her face and form until she thought she might sizzle like a chicken on a spit.

“Why am I not surprised?” he asked.

 

She sang with a perfect, off-key joy. The room, adjoining the kitchen of Lumley House, was small and cramped and windowless, but the open door let in a flood of light. Aidan sat on the opposite side of the folding privy screen and put his hands over his ears, but her exuberant and bawdy song screeched through the barrier.

She broke off and called, “Do you like my song, Your Worship?”

“It's grand,” he forced himself to say. “Simply grand.”

“I could sing you another if you wish,” she said eagerly.

“Ah, that would be a high delight indeed, I'm sure,” he said.

She took his patronage seriously. Too seriously.

 

“The bed it shook

As pleasure took

The carpet-knight for a ride…”

 

She belted the words out unblushingly. Aidan had never seen a mere bath have this sort of effect on anyone. How a wooden barrel half filled with lukewarm water could make a woman positively drunk with elation was beyond him.

She splashed and sang and every once in a while he could hear a scrubbing sound. He hoped she was availing herself of the harsh wood-ash soap.

Pippa's singing had long since driven the Lumley maids into the yard to gossip. When he had told them to draw a bath, they had shaken their heads and muttered about Lord Lumley's strange Irish guests.

But they had obeyed. Even in London, so many leagues from his kingdom in Kerry, he was still the O Donoghue Mór.

Except to Pippa. Despite her constant attempts to entertain him and seek his approval, she had no respect for his status. She paused in her song to draw breath or perhaps—God forbid—think up another verse.

“Are you quite finished?” Aidan asked.

“Finished? Are we pressed for time?”

“You'll wind up pickled like a herring if you stew in there much longer.”

“Oh, very well.” He heard the slap of water sloshing against the sides of the barrel. “Where are my clothes?” she asked.

“In the kitchen. Iago will boil them. The maids found you a few things. I hung them on a peg—”

“Oooh.” She managed to infuse the exclamation with a wealth of wonder and yearning. “These are truly a gift from heaven.”

They were no gift, but the castoffs of a maid who had run off with a Venetian sailor the week before. He heard Pippa bumping around behind the screen. A few moments later, she emerged.