Sharon Penman: Prince of Darkness

“Mama said she was the baby’s…” Lucy frowned, trying to remember, her expression a mirror in miniature of her mother’s. “… the baby’s godmother!”

Agnes, a wise woman, detected the unspoken admission of jealousy and did her best to reassure Lucy that her mother’s new goddaughter was not a rival for her affections. “It is not like having a child of your own blood, not like you, Lucy. Nonetheless, it is a great honor to be a godparent. You ought to be pleased that your mama was chosen.”

Lucy did not seem overly impressed with the honor, but Justin felt a sudden stab of guilt. Agnes’s words reminded him that a godmother was only one of the benefits other children enjoyed and Aline would be denied. How could he and Claudine seek out godparents for a child whose very existence must be kept secret?

At that moment, he happened to see Aldred leaning against the far wall. The young Kentishman worked for Jonas, the one-eyed serjeant who was Justin’s sometime partner and the fulltime scourge of the London underworld. Justin began to weave his way across the common room. Aldred was hoarding a pile of Nell’s savory wafers and they staged a mock struggle over possession, which ended with several wafers sliding off the platter into the floor rushes. Justin and Aldred reacted as one, hastily looking around to make sure Nell hadn’t noticed the mishap.

Justin whistled for Shadow, who eagerly volunteered for wafer cleanup, and then followed Aldred toward a vacant space on the closest bench. Watching the revelries, Justin felt a quiet contentment, a sense of belonging that he’d rarely experienced. He knew that he did not truly belong on Gracechurch Street, but thanks to his friendship with Nell and Aldred and Gunter the blacksmith, he’d been accepted as if he did, and that was an unusual occurrence in his life. Even before he’d learned the truth about his paternity, he’d always felt like an outsider, the foundling without family in a world in which family was paramount.

But on Gracechurch Street, he knew these people, knew their secrets and their hopes. He knew that the cartwright’s brother was smitten with the weaver’s daughter, knew that Avice, the tanner’s widow, fed her children by taking in laundry and an occasional male customer when her pantry ran bare, knew that Aldred was besotted with Nell and Gunter still mourned his dead wife, and that his neighbors no longer looked upon him with suspicion, that they’d learned to trust him enough to take pride in knowing that one of the queen’s men was living in their midst.

The new mother, Cicily, was basking in the attention, and she’d just dramatically declared that her next child would be a boy since the first sight to fill her eyes upon leaving the church was a little lad. At that moment, there was a sudden, loud pounding at the door. Nell hastened over and slid back the latch. It was soon apparent to the others that she was arguing with the Watch, for snatches of conversation came wafting in with each blast of cold air.

“… curfew rung at St Mary-Le-Bow!”

“But we are closed to the public!” Nell protested. “My friends and I are celebrating Cicily’s churching.”

“… heard that one before… hauled into the wardmoot… huge fine…”

“Oh, Splendor of God!” Nell threw up her hands in frustration. “Justin, will you please come tell these fools that we are not open for business?” Ignoring his obvious reluctance, she swung back toward the Watch, arms akimbo, eyes snapping. “Hear it from the queen’s man if you doubt my word!”

Knowing Nell was not to be denied, Justin got to his feet and crossed to the door. With a reproachful glance toward Nell that was utterly wasted, he stepped outside to talk to the Watch. Returning soon thereafter, he muttered that the Watch was satisfied and grabbed Nell in time to stop her from opening the door and shouting a triumphant “I told you so!”

Conversation resumed and once it had reached a festive level again, Aldred elbowed Justin in the ribs and murmured, “So how did you ‘satisfy’ the Watch?” for he knew Justin well enough to feel confident that he’d not clubbed them over the heads with the queen’s name.

“How do you think? I bribed them,” Justin confessed quietly, and they exchanged grins, for they’d both learned by now that the less authority men had, the more likely they were to defend it jealously. But it was then that the banging began again, even louder this time.

“I’ll get it,” Aldred offered quickly, for Nell’s outraged expression did not bode well for a peaceful resolution. Before she could object, he darted to the door. “It is not the Watch come back,” he announced with palpable relief, and opened the door wide. “Someone is asking after you, Justin.”

The man was a stranger. He was clad in a costly wool mantle that told Justin he was no ordinary courier; so did his self-assurance, which bordered on arrogance. “I’d been told that if you were not to be found at the cottage by the smithy, I should seek you at the alehouse,” he said, drawing out a tightly rolled parchment. “This was to be delivered into your hands and yours alone.”

Justin had received urgent communications in the past. But the queen would not be sending him messages from Germany. For a brief moment, he wondered if it could be from his father. Almost at once, he dismissed that idea; the bishop had never bothered to learn how to reach him in London. A wax seal dangled from the scroll, its imprint unfamiliar to him. Claiming the letter, he headed into the kitchen in search of light and privacy.

He broke the seal and unrolled the letter as soon as he reached the hearth. The handwriting was not known to him, and his eyes flicked to the last line, seeking the identity of the sender. He caught his breath at the sight of Claudine’s name, elegantly inscribed across the bottom of the page. He read rapidly by the flickering light of the kitchen fireplace, then went back and read it a second time.

“Justin?”

His head coming up sharply, he saw Nell standing in the doorway. “I do not mean to pry,” she said. Not even Nell could carry that off with a straight face, and her lips were twitching. “All right, I do. But it is my experience that mysterious messages arriving in the middle of the night rarely bear good news. Does this one?”

“No, most likely not, Nell. I shall have to leave at first light. I’d be grateful if you could care for Shadow whilst I am gone.”

Nell grimaced and sighed and looked put-upon, but eventually agreed, as they both knew she’d do. “At least tell me where you’ll be going.”

Justin glanced down at the letter again. “Dover,” he said, “where I’ll be taking ship for France.”

In his twenty-one years, Justin had never set foot on shipboard, and he’d have been content to go to his grave without ever having that experience. He’d done his best to make the trip tolerable, seeking out a priest to be shriven even before booking passage, and then searching for the dockside alehouse frequented by the crew of his ship, the Holy Ghost. It was easy enough to befriend the sailors, taking no more than an offer to buy them an ale, and by the time he was ferried out to their ship, he had earned an exemption from the casual contempt that sailors worldwide bestowed upon their land-loving passengers.

His alehouse companions found him a sheltered spot on deck, pointed out the steering oar that acted as a rudder, and showed him how the compass worked-a needle magnetized by a lodestone, then placed on a pivot in a shallow pan of water. One even shared a pinch of ground ginger, swearing it would settle his stomach and keep him from feeding the fish. Justin was grateful for their goodwill. It did not make the voyage any less unpleasant for him, though. He shuddered every time the ship sank into a slough, holding his breath until it battled its way back. The ship was so low in the water that he was doused with sea spray, chilled to the very marrow of his bones, but the sailors insisted that his queasiness would worsen within the crowded, rank confines of the canvas tent set up to shelter the passengers, where men were “puking their guts up” and there was not room enough to “swing a dead cat.” So Justin stayed out on the deck, bracing himself against the gunwale of the Holy Ghost and clinging to the Infinite Mercy of Almighty God.