Susan Wiggs - At The Queen's Summons

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 Caribbean 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.