The Rogue's Princess (3 page)

Staring defiantly into the gathering dark, Kit refused to get down on his knees for his nightly prayer, sick of all that worship business after the ‘purifying’ he had received in the horse trough. If God was going to send an earthquake just because Kit had finally found a place he could be happy, then He wasn’t much of a god and Kit renounced Him as he had his father and his negligent family. Bitter experience had taught him that if you were going to be rejected it was as well to beat them to the punch and get your own rejection in first.

1

1586

‘Are you sure, absolutely and utterly certain, that there is nothing ungodly about this feast for your father’s fellow tradesmen?’ Mercy asked her best friend, Ann Belknap, as the two sat in her little bedchamber watching the boats take the perilous passage under the arches of the bridge.

The goldsmith’s daughter, her hair the hue of her father’s wares, eyes a clear grey-blue, smothered a smile. Mercy knew that Ann understood how seriously she took such matters – and how she felt she had to report any little infraction to her sober-minded father as if she had some huge debt to pay and he was in charge of the tally.

‘No, Mercy, my father’s friends are all respectable men and their wives are above reproach. I have asked you to bear me company for a family supper, not to dance with the Devil on the steps of St Paul’s in naught but your shift.’

Mercy blushed at the thought, but couldn’t stifle a giggle. When it was just the two of them, Ann was far more outspoken than she dared be, saying the most outrageous things. Mercy loved her all the more for it as it gave her an outlet for her own rebellious thoughts to hear them in someone else’s mouth. Mercy had, of course, given up her childish
notions that she had personally caused the earthquake all those years ago, and now was embarrassed by the self-regard that had thought such a thing possible, but she still laboured under the belief she owed God for everything and had to live up to His exacting standards as befitted a child of John Hart.

And yet an evening at her friend’s should be permissible, surely? Before she knew it, she heard herself saying: ‘I would be delighted to come. Thank you for the invitation.’

‘Good, then you must stay for the night as you will not be back before curfew.’ Ann tweaked Mercy’s drab skirt. ‘And you must let me dress you too – I’ve a kirtle in a pretty colour that would become you and two glorious new bodices just come from the tailor – you can wear one of them.’ Daughter of one of the City’s richest men, Ann’s wardrobe had more clothes than most court ladies. She was so generous with her father’s riches that she had probably ordered the extra bodice with Mercy in mind. ‘My father would not approve of you coming to a merry feast looking as though you are in deep mourning.’

Mercy felt she had just been made to agree to something, but she wasn’t sure what.

‘Did I tell you Master Fletcher called on Father to ask for Catherine’s hand?’ On impulse, Ann leant out of the window and threw a straw into the water below to watch it be carried away on the hungry tide.

‘Nay. What happened?’ Mercy perched beside her, sniffing with relish the fresh air of a stiff breeze off the sea.

‘He was sent away with a flea in his ear. None of us will marry anyone less than a guildsman if my father has his way. Catherine was relieved: Fletcher’s breath smelt of onions.’

The gust of wind sent Mercy’s ruff into a flutter, pins from where she had not anchored it securely scattering into the water below. She hastily grabbed the loose end before it too went sailing.

‘Here, let me do that.’ Ann clucked her tongue. ‘You have a mighty skill at striking wide with the pins, like a half-blind archer shooting at the butts on Finsbury Fields.’

‘I know. I’m hopelessly untidy even though I try not to be.’ Mercy gestured to the room she shared with her sister. It was a case in point. Her truckle bed was a tumble of sheets; Faith’s made right and tight as if she had never slept in it. Their belongings were in a similar state: Mercy’s trunk a jumble, Faith’s neat as if for military inspection.

‘I don’t understand it,’ continued Ann, as she worked her way round Mercy’s collar, ‘neither your brother nor your sister wear such plain, dull clothes, and your father is the biggest importer of cloth in London! I noticed that Faith is wearing a lovely russet kirtle and white sleeves today, so clearly this is none of her doing.’

Mercy made no comment. It was a matter between her and God, and Ann would just laugh if she told her. Besides, she was used to being the less regarded sister in the shadow of Faith’s shining reputation.

‘My friend.’ Ann had nearly reached the end of her task, tipping Mercy’s head sideways to ease in the last fastening. ‘I think you must be a fool for wasting your position; you could have your pick of the shipments. It’s as though you don’t like being a girl.’

Mercy hummed in a non-committal manner.

‘You must admit that choosing pretty clothes is part of the
fun of belonging to our sex. Lord knows, we have few other advantages.’

Mercy smoothed her grey skirts, secretly agreeing that they were dreadful, but she had made a bargain with God when she was little and she meant to keep it. ‘I like being this way.’

Ann turned away to gather a few things for Mercy, putting them in a little leather bag. ‘No, you don’t. I see you eyeing my orange kirtle. You, Mercy Hart, are a counterfeit good girl. There is a merry maid just wanting to burst out.’

Wasn’t that the truth? Mercy was beginning to regret her decision to go; she knew her weaknesses well enough to realize she should resist putting herself in the path of temptation.

‘Please, Ann, I’ve said I’d come to your feast. Let that be enough.’

Ann shoved a nightgown and clean shift into Mercy’s arms and held the bag open to receive them. ‘Then we shall make our escape. Supper is at seven.’

In the family parlour downstairs, Faith was sewing on the bench seat by the riverside window. The light fell across her face, making her look like the painting of the Madonna in St Mary Overie, the one that had survived the reformers’ whitewash. Faith would not welcome the comparison as such depictions were suspect, so Mercy kept that thought private. Mercy’s grandmother, Mary Isham, sat bundled in blankets by the fire, her chin wagging in the way of the very old as she stroked the tabby cat curled on her knee. Her white hair was bizarrely decked with ribbons like a girl on May Day.

‘I’m going to Ann’s, Gran,’ Mercy bellowed into her ear.

Grandmother Isham smiled up at her granddaughter and cupped her cheek. ‘That’s good, dear. France is said to be very pleasant.’

Ann giggled.

Mercy didn’t bother to correct her grandmother’s mistake; she trusted Faith to convey the message to her father on his return.

‘Do you mind if I go?’ Mercy asked her sister.

Faith looked up and smiled serenely. As ever when seeing that expression on her sister’s face, Mercy was reminded of the Thames far upstream in its placid course winding through meadows near Windsor; and, if anyone cared to ask her opinion, Mercy thought herself more akin to the turbulent tidal reaches outside their front door.

‘Of course not, dearest.’ Faith’s voice was melodious and soft, hardly impacting on the quiet of the parlour. ‘What time will you be home?’

Mercy felt her tones were like an untuned viol in her sister’s presence. ‘About nine tomorrow morning?’

Faith threaded a needle with blue silk. ‘Then I hope you enjoy yourself.’

As the two friends turned to leave, the front door banged opened and Aunt Rose came in from the street, a basket on her arm loaded with vegetables. A tall woman with handsome features, something of a warrior-queen in the way she battled through life, she was already talking as she entered. ‘I swear it is madness out there. The bridge is packed with pilgrims going south and Kentish men going north; you have to be as thin as a fillet to get through.’

Grandmother Isham perked up when she saw her favourite
daughter come in. ‘Ah, sweet, come sit by the fire, warm yourself.’

Rose looked outside at the sunny winter day and smiled. ‘Thank you, Ma. I’ll be with you anon when I’ve put this lot away. The market was like a cockfight. You would’ve thought there were no more carrots to be had in Christendom the way the goodwives were pulling caps askew to get at them.’

Grandmother Isham caught Mercy’s hand. ‘Rosie put my hair up.’ She turned her head for them to admire. ‘She said I looked as pretty as a picture when she’d finished.’

Mercy leant down and kissed the old lady’s wrinkled cheek. ‘And so you do, Gran.’

‘My Ben will be tickled when he sees me.’ She patted her hair, pushing one ribbon astray.

Mercy tied it back into place. ‘That he will.’ Sadly, Grandfather Ben Isham had been dead these ten years and would never see anything again.

‘He always likes me in ribbons and nothing else,’ the old lady said proudly tugging at her shawl.

Alarmed that they were about to be treated to a display of rather more aged flesh than they had bargained for, Faith got up from her seat and put her sewing aside. ‘Now, now, Gran, you know Grandfather Ben is not here.’ She knelt by the old lady, holding her hands to stop her unlacing her bodice.

Grandmother shook her head. ‘Of course he is, you silly goose. Faith, you are such a giddy girl sometimes! He went out but a few minutes ago.’

‘Leave her be, Faith,’ warned Rose softly. ‘Let her keep her beliefs.’

Faith pursed her lips. ‘But it is a lie.’

Rose put her hands on her hips, the dispute an old one. ‘So to live up to your strict interpretation of the truth, she must learn of his passing daily and grieve afresh?’

Mercy hated the tension that bristled between the two women, both mothers to her when she had never known her own. Since Rose Isham’s disgrace had forced her to come to live in their household, she had always been at odds with her perfect niece. At twenty, Faith was an impeccable daughter who had not put so much as one slippered foot wrong, the belle of the bridge, her hand sought by guildsmen across London. A spinster in her thirties, Rose had blotted her reputation ten years ago by daring to love a worthless, but smooth-talking man, living with him until he abandoned her five years later when a richer prospect for wife came into view. Shamed, but spirit not broken. Rose appeared to have far more time for Mercy, the ramshackle sixteen-year-old who tried so hard, but never achieved her aim of matching her sister. With Faith, Rose always acted as if talking to her were as welcome as sucking lemons.

‘Ann, tell Rose about my trip,’ Mercy declared a touch too brightly, forcing a turn of subject.

Ann rose to the occasion. ‘Mistress Isham, according to your mother, I am taking your niece to France. Can you believe it?’ Ann laughed merrily at the absurdity of the idea.

Rose dropped her gaze from the silent battle of wills with Faith and shook her head. She began unpacking her purchases. ‘Aye, of you, I can believe anything, Mistress Ann. Next port of call the moon. But what’s all this about France?’

Mercy held out her hands to squeeze her aunt’s fingers. ‘Gran misheard. I’m going to
Ann’s
to a fine supper. We shall
have, oh, I don’t know, at least ten dishes, all superior to those on the Queen’s table!’

‘And I’m to dress Mercy like a duchess.’ Ann smiled conspiratorially at Rose.

‘Pray do so. We are tired of seeing her in these hedge-sparrow clothes.’ Rose hugged her niece – Mercy was still the baby of the family with no younger children coming along behind her. John Hart had not remarried after his wife, Rose’s sister, died giving birth to Mercy. ‘Go enjoy yourself, sweet.’

‘I’ll be good,’ Mercy promised solemnly.

‘We know you will, love.’ Rose ushered her to the door, wrapping her niece’s cloak about her shoulders. ‘On occasion, I would wish you to be just the tiniest bit bad.’

Mercy felt a twinge of guilt leaving Faith, Rose and Gran in each other’s company. Without her presence to smooth the way, the younger two were prone to fall into bickering and that upset Grandmother Isham. She prayed Edwin and her father would return soon to dilute the combustible mix.

Ann hooked her arm through Mercy’s. ‘Don’t worry about Rose and Faith. They are not your burden to bear.’

Mercy smiled at her friend even though she didn’t agree. They were family – and family was everything. After God, that is.

Kit wondered what on earth had possessed him to agree to dine at Alderman Jerome Belknap’s house that evening. True, Belknap was a particular friend of James Burbage and had floated the company many a loan when they’d hit lean times. He was also said to have a brood of fine-looking girls, all heiresses if the rumour about his will was to be believed. Even
without that promise of future wealth, their dowries had to be substantial. Pretty faces would alleviate what would otherwise inevitably prove to be a deadly dull occasion. Kit, if pressed, couldn’t imagine more tedious company than a pack of City merchants all discussing percentages, or whatever it was these men talked about when they could be torn away from totting up their gains in the counting houses.

Primping his ruff and combing his hair in a tiny hand mirror, Kit had to own up to the fact that the real reason he had agreed to come was that he wished to please Burbage. He owed more to the man than any other alive, even his own family with whom he had recently been partially reconciled. He had met his half-brothers during the summer two years back when one of their servants had courted his friend, Milly Porter. He had learnt then that ignorance of his existence rather than neglect had lain behind his abandonment at the tender age of ten. He had given them a grudging acquittal. But his ties to them were nothing compared to those linking him to Burbage. The manager had taken him on when others had abandoned him, paid him well while he played boy roles and then crowned all these obligations by giving him the chance to graduate to the hero roles he had always hankered after. If Burbage said jump, then Kit would have great difficulty not leaping.

Still, he would much prefer to be spending the evening down the Two Necks with Tom Saxon and Guy Warrender. Kit took a swig of sack from a bottle by his bedside and let out a heartfelt sigh. He had been promised an introduction to Anthony Babington and his set – noisy young gentlemen who lived life with a flash and flare that Kit wouldn’t mind emulating.