The Rogue's Princess (9 page)

‘Turner, you didn’t get a chance to meet us last night. This is Anthony Babington.’ A young man with tightly curled brown hair and grey eyes nodded to him. ‘Robert Gage and Charles Pilney.’ Babington’s two companions bowed in their seats, too close to the board to rise.

‘Christopher Turner.’ Kit bowed, delighted he had this chance to meet the set of gentlemen he’d heard much about. They were cutting a dash in the tavern world at present, admired for their swagger and bold talk. ‘And this is my half-brother, Tobias Lacey.’

‘Master Lacey,’ acknowledged Babington. ‘Your brother is the Earl of Dorset, is he not?’

‘Aye, marry, sir, he is.’ Tobias took a seat next to Babington.

‘Interesting: an earl with a player for a half-brother.’ Babington’s eyes flicked between them like a carter’s whip urging on the horses.

Tobias shrugged. ‘I know, terrible embarrassment, is it not? But Kit can’t help having an earl in the family. We just don’t talk about Will much.’

The men hooted with laughter at this. Tom pulled Kit to sit next to him at the same moment the maid arrived with their stew. All eyes immediately went to the girl as she was coming perilously close to spilling from her bodice.

‘Do you have everything you need, sirs?’ she asked coyly.

‘I wouldn’t mind a drink from the buttery bar,’ replied Tom, ogling her cleavage.

‘God amercy, sir, you make a dry jest.’ She cuffed him over the head without too much rancour.

‘Nay, Mary, after the play I’ll have coins in my pocket that’ll jingle like the bells at Bow. Wouldn’t you like to hear
them peal?’ He buried his face in her midriff and took a pretend bite.

This byplay hugely entertained the others. All urged Tom on with his wooing with ribald remarks.

The maid was well used to dealing with over-amorous customers. She took both his ears in her capable hands and twisted them so he had to look up. ‘Enough of your pishery-pashery, Tom Saxon. I know you theatre boys – all talk and no … money.’ Kit spluttered into his ale at this innuendo. ‘Besides, this maid is not for barter.’ She leant forward and planted a sound kiss on Tom’s lips, then bounced away, giggling.

Tom fell back in a feigned swoon as the others cheered the damsel. ‘I think I love the wench.’

‘Hey, Saxon, she almost took your eyes out with her finest points!’ crowed Babington.

‘For a moment there, I thought I was in heaven!’ sighed Tom.

‘For a moment there, I’d say that ugly face of yours was,’ quipped Kit.

The riotous party spilled out of the tavern at a quarter to two, barely enough time for Kit and Tom to change for their first scene. They had had more ale than usual, succumbing to the temptation to keep calling the luscious Mary back to their corner. Tobias was leaning rather heavily against his brother, somewhat the worse for the experience.

‘My masters, we must bid you farewell as we have a play to put on,’ Tom said, bowing to Babington and his crew with the clumsy exuberance of the half-sottled.

‘Shall we meet afterwards – return to see how goes our brave Saxon’s wooing of the fair Mary?’ suggested Babington, clapping Tom on the back.

Kit grinned. This was going better than he could hope. Tom had gained them entry to the swaggering set with his antics.

‘Master Turner?’

He spun round to find Mercy Hart and another woman staring at him in amazement. They had clearly just descended from a pillion saddle as their horse was being led away by John Ostler.

Oh, darkness and devils, this was not how he wanted to meet her again, not standing among this sharp-eyed set of young gentlemen. But it couldn’t be helped.

‘Mistress Hart.’ He bowed, trying to prevent the men seeing her by standing directly in her path.

His poor Mercy was looking in some confusion at his bright clothing, wondering how her black raven had transformed overnight into this peacock.

‘I decided to take your advice and go to a play,’ she said softly, her eyes willing him to return to the man she thought she knew.

Kit tugged at his ruff awkwardly. ‘That is very good, mistress.’ Oh, hell. He’d not even had a chance to explain to her and now it was too late.

Babington jostled Tobias aside to stand next to Kit. ‘What’s this? Another sweet plum! Is London not stocked with the most tasty morsels at present? Will she come join our party after the play? I wouldn’t mind a closer acquaintance with her wares.’

Kit felt a surge of anger against the man’s crude language – and against himself for putting Mercy in this position. Such talk had seemed apt in the tavern, but not in the cold light of day.

‘No, Mistress Hart will not be joining us,’ he said stiffly, hoping to signal that they were dealing with a very different sort of girl here.

Too tipsy to notice, Babington had the effrontery to seize Mercy’s hand, as if she were a common serving maid, and devour her arm with kisses. ‘Can I not change your mind, sweetness? I am the helpless suitor for your charms: let the sun of your approval shine on this poor man.’

‘Make that twin suns,’ sniggered Saxon.

Kit had to restrain himself from giving in to his urge to punch both men; only Mercy’s shocked expression gave him strength to pause before he made a bad situation worse. But he couldn’t let her be pawed like that. Swiftly, he moved forward to make Babington unhand his lady, knowing it would likely lead to a quarrel later with the hot-tempered gentleman.

Fortunately, the older woman beside Mercy stepped in at this point and smacked Babington away.

‘Fie on you, sir! Have you no shame?’

Babington swung round to the angry lady and clasped her round the waist. ‘What’s this? A fiery matron? And a handsome one too! Gads, I love a lively armful. Come kiss me, sweet and thirty!’

His wooing was brought to an abrupt stop by a well-placed knee, fresh cause for hilarity among his peers. They gathered round him, making jests at his expense. Kit however was
desperate to mend things with his damsel who was rapidly marching away with her defender.

‘Mistress Hart, Mercy, please!’ He caught up with her. ‘I pray you pardon him – he is not himself: he’s had too much to drink.’

Mercy looked at his hand on her arm as if it had metamorphosed into a scorpion. His heart turned over: yester eve she had regarded him so lovingly – now he was as desirable as a chamber pot. ‘And this is an excuse for accosting my aunt and me?’

Aunt?
Hellfire. How was that for a first introduction to her family? Kit was aware that he was perilously close to losing his position at the theatre for tardiness, his damsel for the insult and his new friends for appearing such a killjoy. Mayhap the last was no loss, but the other two he refused to give up.

‘Give me a chance to explain – after the play.’ The trumpets were about to be sounded to signal the opening scene and he still had his cobbler garb to put on. ‘Please, Mercy, I cry your mercy.’

With a huff of a sigh, a softening of her stance, she glanced sideways at her aunt, who had stood a curious spectator to this conversation. ‘After the performance then.’

Kit reluctantly released her hand. ‘Meet me here and introduce me to your aunt?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Mercy’s face dimpled as she once again graced him with her smile.

After dropping the fee in the box at the entrance, Aunt Rose showed Mercy to a seat on one of the benches set back from the stage, safely out of the reach of the heaving mass of
groundlings that had paid a penny for the privilege of standing next the stage. Looking around her, taking in every fascinating detail of this dangerous place, Mercy spotted that Kit’s friends had made themselves unpopular by taking stools on the very edge of the raised performance area, a place reserved for gentlemen of means. She couldn’t see him among them, something for which she was grateful: it suggested he had more taste than to thrust himself into the public gaze as they did. This confirmed her suspicion that she had had the misfortune to interrupt him when he was conversing with distant acquaintances – customers, perhaps, whom he could not slight. She wasn’t quite sure how to explain his clothes, but perhaps he would settle that to her satisfaction when they met later.

‘Mercy, how do you know that young man?’ her aunt asked stiffly.

‘I met him last night at Ann’s house.’ Mercy smoothed out the playbill.
The Merchant’s Daughter
– that sounded an innocent enough piece. ‘He sang while I played for him.’

Rose held her hands knotted tightly in her lap. ‘And you do not mind his reputation?’

Mercy supposed that his fame for being a fine singer was a drawback for any modest young man. ‘I know he is very talented, but he seems not to worry about it, so I suppose I should not either.’ Oh stars, she was blushing again. ‘I have hopes he will call on Father – he said he would.’

‘Call on your father? Whatever for?’ Rose’s face was strangely pale.

‘To court me, of course.’ Mercy huddled forward on her bench. ‘We must hush now, Aunt, I think it’s about to begin.’
She didn’t want to miss a word so that she could judge the piece fairly as she had promised Kit.

‘Mercy …’

An alderman’s wife hissed at Rose to hold her tongue as the players had entered, two boys dressed as girls. Ah yes, Mercy had heard of this. Some preachers had claimed it was unnatural, but it did not look that odd to her: both were smooth cheeked and sweet-looking. They carried themselves gracefully, making the illusion that they were female fairly convincing. Their talk was innocent too: one was beloved of a shoemaker, but feared that her father, an important merchant of the City, would refuse them permission to wed. She was determined not to go against daughterly duty and announced – to the groans of the crowd – that she would reject her true love and marry the elderly man her father had chosen for her.

‘Don’t do it, love!’ shouted a groundling. ‘That old codger won’t keep you warm at night!’

A titter ran through the groundlings at this comment, but the boy-girls carried on as if they hadn’t heard. Mercy knew she should be supporting Clarinda’s decision, but a rebellious part of her couldn’t help thinking the heckler had a point.

The boys left and a party of adult actors entered from stage left: the merchant and his trusty servant, Hasty. There was something about the servant that seemed familiar. Had he not been in the inn yard with those rude men?

‘
And here comes the dishonest honest shoemaker!
’ bellowed the merchant. ‘
Tom Cobbler, I welcomed you into my house to make my daughter’s slippers, not to steal her virtue!
’

Mercy watched eagerly for the entrance of the lover, wondering if he would be as fine a man as Clarinda had
claimed. He entered stage right, wrapped in a hooded cloak, hobbling as if injured.

‘
Come, man, your disguise of being a poor lame man, the one you used to win my favour, will serve you no more. Hasty here has exposed your secret.
’

The lover stood up straight and threw off his cloak. ‘
You are right, sir. This disguise is not worthy of my feelings for Clarinda, but how else was I to enter her presence when you bar the door to me?
’

It was Kit.

‘
You are an arrant knave of no place,

Your very presence is an affront to my face!

Get thee gone, and my hatred go with thee.
’

The lover knelt, overcome with sorrow.
‘I leave, but my heart stays with her that loves me.
’

‘Are you all right, Mercy?’ her aunt whispered.

No, she wasn’t all right. She would never be all right again. Kit had played her false. Everything had been a lie. ‘I am well, Aunt. Don’t worry about me.’

Oh, she felt a fool! There she had been telling her aunt that Kit – a player of all things – was going to call on her father and ask for her hand in marriage! She wished she could dig a hole and bury herself, but she couldn’t, for her pride’s sake, let either him or her aunt know how mortified she felt. She had to endure.

She watched the play with growing distaste. Predictably, Clarinda changed her mind about obeying her father and decided instead to elope with Tom Cobbler. It was only the fact that he was an aristocrat in disguise that saved the day, reconciling her father to the match. Hah! Mercy’s father would never be swayed by such worldly attractions. He would worry
more about the duplicitous nature of the man than the blueness of his blood.

Three painful hours later the play concluded with a silly jig, Kit dancing with the boy-girl while all the other players revolved around them. The groundlings loved the display, clapping in time to the music. Kit’s ‘friends’ on the side of the stage shouted lusty advice about the wedding night, laughing at their own blunt wit.

‘Let us go, Aunt.’ Mercy felt she had aged a decade in the time spent watching her dreams of true love turn to farce on the stage.

‘Mercy …’ Rose placed a comforting hand on her arm.

‘I know. I was stupid. I should have asked more about him before encouraging him. It was my mistake.’ Her tone was most unlike her, clipped and bitter. ‘I don’t want to see him again.’

Rose followed her out, pushing past the row of applauding spectators. ‘But you promised to meet him.’

‘For what purpose? So he can mock my ignorance again?’

‘So he can explain. I saw how he looked at you, love. He truly admires you.’

‘You saw his friends. He probably thinks I’m silly enough to be enticed into their low company. I have sinned enough coming to the theatre; I do not want to add my ruin to the tally.’

Rose let her hand fall, wrongly thinking Mercy was taking a swipe at her. That was the last thing Mercy intended. She loved her aunt and if any forgiveness for Rose’s fault was required from her she had long since granted it.

‘I pray your pardon, Aunt. I am not myself. It was … it was a shock.’

Rose smiled grimly. ‘I can imagine. But it is better for you to find out now than before it was too late. Here speaks bitter experience.’

‘Exactly.’ Mercy stamped across the road to the inn, speeding like a runner trying to win the victor’s crown, well ahead of the others now pouring out of the Theatre. ‘But I’m not meeting him. Don’t ask me to.’