“She’s not?” I cried, all aghast, nervous pacing once again taking me forward. “Oh, I do beg your pardon, sir. I was only told to come here and begin my duties, my mother so grateful I was able to find work, and her doing so poorly, I wanted to start right away, and I am so sorry for my mistake and please do not tell Mistress Caraway and—”
As I walked, I had taken several steps toward Henry, who turned to me with such a look of sympathy and understanding that I really would have burst into tears if any of my tale were true. “There now, there’s no problem,” he said gently, and he closed the distance to me, patting me on the shoulder. “I’m sure we can give you a shilling for your troubles.”
“A shilling!” echoed a brother, though his shock was tempered with a smile. “For making a mistake!”
“Good thing he’s joining the Church, Father. He’ll bankrupt you by Twelfth Night else.”
“A shilling,” Henry said firmly. He fished in the pouch at his waist and brought forth the small coin. “And Merry Christmas to you.”
“Thank you, sir! I thank you!” I curtsied clumsily, not really knowing the art of it, and wobbled on my feet in my feigned excitement. Henry reached out and steadied me, as I knew he would, and I tucked Lucretia’s letter into his still half-open pouch as he did so, keeping myself from removing another coin only with the greatest of efforts.
We both straightened, and Henry turned to his father. “Good day to you, my lord,” he said. I watched his father nod back to him, and the man’s look of stark sadness cut me to the core. This was the face of a man who believed he was losing a son. I almost threw up my hands in exasperation. I didn’t have time for this!
I dashed out the door, but instead of turning right, I turned left, ducking behind the nearest corner. Henry left shortly after, his brothers soon after that. It was only when I heard the steps of his father that I stirred.
“My lord? Your pardon, my lord?” I popped out from my hiding place with my hands out where the old man could see them.
“You!” he said sharply. “Why are you hanging about? You’ve received your shilling and to spare—”
“No, no!” I cut him off. “I’ve not much time. I just wanted you to know—never mind how I know this, but take it as truth an’ it serves you. Your son is quite in love with a maiden named Lucretia Williams. His heart is set on her, but he feels her family is not highly enough placed to do honor to you. If you could— I mean I wouldn’t know, but—”
“Lucretia . . . Williams?” The Dobbs patriarch asked thoughtfully, his gaze now intrigued. “The Williams Farm . . .”
By the time he thought to ask a further question, I was gone.
CHAPTER NINE
I raced out of the Guild Hall, my mind churning. How was I going to get Henry’s letter to Lucretia? And how quickly could I ensure she read it? The churchgoers would have long since dispersed, and I did not know the habits of the gentry well enough to know where Lucretia might be spending the rest of day. . . .
But once again, the season of Christmas was granting me her gifts.
I heard the sound of carolers break out far on the other side of town, and I stopped, momentarily transfixed by the sound. Caroling, of course! How had I not thought of that? Surely Lucretia would join in such a traditional outing with her lovely voice . . . particularly given her desire to see Henry whenever she thought she would be unobserved.
I set off to track the happy sound when a pint-size fury burst out from the alleyway, all white hair and wild eyes and waving hands and trouble.
“Meg! Meg!” Tommy Farrow windmilled straight into me, unable to stop his forward progress. “You’ve got to come now! Mistress Meredith is having her baby and Grandma sent for me to fetch you! I’ve been looking all over town.”
“Me? But why?” I frowned at him. “I have no idea—oh!” Belatedly, realization struck me, and I crouched down to look the excited boy in the eye. There was no doubt in my mind that Grandma Agnes had needed Tommy’s little boy self out of the way as she tended to the difficult business of childbirth. By sending him to find me, she’d bought herself at least an hour. I had to see what I could do about making it longer. Lucretia and Henry were my mission, but the Golden Rose was my family. They mattered more. “I’m so glad for your help, Tommy,” I said. “In truth, I don’t think I could make it by myself. I’ve quite turned my ankle. Could you help me walk?”
Tommy’s face looked like he was acting a role in a comedy, an O of disbelief stretching his mouth wide. “You’ve hurt yourself! But, Meg, no! We have to hurry!”
“And hurry we will—just—a little help . . .”
I faked a few painful hops, and Tommy darted beneath my arm, urging me forward even as he was careful to make sure he helped me as best as he was able. It took us twice as long as it should have to reach the Cock’s Crow, and I heard the thin cry of a newborn as we reached the bottom of the staircase inside the inn.
“The baby!” Tommy squeaked, and I let him go then, grinning as he raced up the stairs.
I turned to leave just as quickly and ran directly into Master James.
“It’s here?” he asked, looking up the stairs as well. “We’ve our newest member of the Golden Rose?”
“We do,” I said, pushing him back toward the street. “But we must be off! Come on then, hurry! We’ve caroling to do!”
I paused just long enough inside the door of the inn to take off my apron and kirtle, while a startled James shielded me from prying eyes. My finer dress lay beneath the outer costume, and in short order I was dashing out again into the street, just as a light snow began to fall on the city.
It took but a few minutes to explain to Master James what was needed, and we found the carolers as they were entering one of the finer neighborhoods on the outskirts of town. James and I easily infiltrated the group, him singing in a beautiful baritone and me in a somewhat more indifferent soprano. The music of the “Coventry Carol” was familiar and well worn, the words easy to recall:
Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
As we sang, I moved slightly forward in the crowd, seeing that I was not the only one using the lullaby to ease closer to my quarry. Lucretia was drifting toward Henry, looking for all the world as if she was doing no such thing. We passed the time like that until we came to what was arguably the largest house at the end of the lane. Nothing so grand as Annabelle Farthington’s estate, I was sure, but a nice home all the same, with a warm, cheerful stone, each window boasting a lit candle. Lucretia smiled, and I did too. This was her home.
It was time.
It took me but a minute to step up to her. I had no time for subtlety here. The actors had taken the stage. I pressed the letter into her hand.
She looked at me, startled, and even as her fingers went tight around the letter, her eyes went to my hair. “Oh! Whatever happened to you?” She gasped.
My hair! I’d ripped off first my smart hat this day, and then the cap, and James had uttered not one word about how much of a wreck I looked. I scowled over at him, but he was doing the job I’d requested, which meant I needed to act with haste.
“Lucretia, there’s no time for me to explain. Read this,” I said, tapping the letter she had locked in her hand. “Read it, and read it now.”
“What? But what is it?” She unfolded the letter, and I could see her face flush as she recognized the name. “It’s from Henry! To me!” she said. “But how?” Her eyes met mine in panic. “I lost my letter. I had a letter! But I lost—”
Oh, for the love of angels. “I know, dear heart,” I said. “Just read this one instead.”
Happily, she already was. Her hands were shaking like saplings in a storm, her eyes filling with tears. My eyes were filling with tears at that. I’d alrea
dy read the letter, after all, in my own fashion. It was quite worth crying over.
I glanced across the clutch of singers, not surprised to see that James had managed to get Henry corralled as well, urging him closer to Lucretia with every step. Now the two were rather near each other. I nodded to James, and he tapped Henry hard, jostling him to the side.
Like any good merchant, Henry’s hand went straight to his pouch—where he found a letter of his own to read.
Frowning, Henry pulled the folded piece of parchment out, just as I slipped back into the crowd, grateful to see James even now hooking his arm into that of one Annabelle Farthington. The capricious girl’s delighted smile told the story of her reaction to the dashing stranger giving her special attention, and I took the opportunity to glance back to Henry and Lucretia.
They’d stopped reading the letters.
In fact, they’d stopped doing anything, really, their eyes now locked on each other’s, their faces rapt, the letters still clutched in their hands, but their expressions revealing so much of their emotions, it almost hurt to look at them. Not that I stopped looking, of course. Instead I clasped my own hands together, close over my heart, seeing a lifetime written in the gazes of these two young people, a lifetime of wonder, of hope . . . and of love.
And just then, up at the entryway, the doorway to Lucretia’s house opened, and members of the household came out to reward the carolers, chief among them a man I remembered quite well: one Master Woolen Merchant Dobbs. He and another august older gentleman found their young children standing together so close in the crowd of revelers, and their shared glance of understanding and indulgent, satisfied smiles told a story all its own.
It would be a very Merry Christmas in Leeds, indeed.
CHAPTER TEN
Two evenings later the clouds seemed to chase themselves away; the skies were open and glorious, white stars winking against inky black darkness. The Golden Rose was camped just outside of town in the field of a Christmas-minded farmer who saw no harm in allowing a group of actors to create a bonfire on his property, in exchange for some of Leeds’ finest bolts of woolen cloth and perhaps an errant jewel or two.
I watched Meredith and Matthias cuddle their newborn in another blanket of rich wool, the two of them smiling and laughing and sometimes crying over the wee child. I couldn’t rightly see the sense of their tears, except in relief that the pregnancy was safely over and the wife could travel again. She was moving better already, her color was strong, and her baby seemed to be noticing the wide world around him—when he wasn’t sleeping. Which wasn’t often.
“You’re smiling, Meg. Should I be worried?”
“It’s been a fine bit of business, this,” I said, moving over to let Master James sit down beside me. The group was laughing, cheerful and hopeful about what was to come even as we huddled into our many brightly colored blankets. The Dobbs family had been more than generous when Lucretia had introduced me properly, and the woolens we could not share we would be able to sell easily and well as winter wore on.
More laughter broke out, and I nodded at the members of the Golden Rose who even now had started running lines of a new play based upon some of the more colorful characters we’d encountered in town. The current preferred title for this comedy was The Beggared Lord, and it looked as if it had enough lines already to launch within the next few months. I listened with half an ear even as Master James settled himself, knowing that I’d be called upon to remember the best lines once the ale took hold and everyone’s recall had fled. “We are fortunate indeed. All in all, Leeds had been very good to us,” I said.
“And you have been very good to Leeds.” Master James lifted his own flagon of ale, and I raised my cup to complete the toast. I smiled, warmed by his compliment, but he pressed on. “You saved us, Meg, with your quick thinking after Theodore’s betrayal. I never thought he would turn on us so quickly. It took me quite by surprise, but not you.”
I made to speak, but he shook his head to stay my words. “No, do not explain it away. Your sleight of hand and quickness of mind have only increased over the past several months. Perhaps I never noticed it while your grandfather was alive, or perhaps his death has spurred you to speed, but either way, you are a proven asset to this troupe, and it is time we used you to greater effect.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Greater effect?”
“The actors have a stage manager, and all to the better for them,” he said. “Those who work the crowd could benefit from such careful orchestration. You have proven that you can see more than most. Perhaps with some additional training, you could take on such a role?”
I strove to hide my excitement, for I knew what was coming next. James was a fair man, and for all that he did not think women could run the troupe, he knew the value of what he was asking. “For a cut of the take, of course,” James continued. “We would keep a tally, and whatever the troupe brings in, a portion of it would be yours to call your own.” Finally he turned to look at me, and I did not miss the warmth in his gaze or the indulgence of his smile.
For my own part, however, I played aloof. “I should like that very much, Master James. Should you have a mind to make me the leader of the street troupe, I shall not let you down.”
“Hmm,” he said. “In truth I value your insights more and more with this business. Again, I cannot imagine how I missed Theodore’s lack of backbone.”
I shrugged. “Theodore is not so different from us, but he doesn’t have a family to call his own. When trouble strikes, he must act selfishly, or find himself at the wrong end of a pike.”
“And still you didn’t turn him over to the magistrate, but let him go.” James eyed me sternly. “With food and clothing, no less. I saw you.”
I glanced away to hide my embarrassment. “It wasn’t a new costume, and he needed to get away. Theodore will not starve, but we could not afford to earn his ill will. Perhaps the next time we run afoul of him, he will treat us with more care.”
“Perhaps,” James said, but he didn’t look convinced. “Or perhaps your softheartedness will do you no kindness one day, and you will find treachery when all you expect is honor.”
“Pray, never that,” I said, seeking to lighten his dark mood. “But we have more important topics to discuss than my soft heart. Where shall we be off to next? Sheffield is a distance, but there are people there, and we’ve much to barter for inns and food.”
“Sheffield is a start,” James agreed. “But with the coming of spring, I think our attentions should be drawn yet farther south. Perhaps all the way to Londontown?”
“London!” I stared at him. “You cannot mean it!”
“London,” he said emphatically. He could see the protest warring within me, and his next words were gentle. “Your grandfather is dead, Meg. You know yourself that we cannot make the money we did when he was alive. There just isn’t enough of a market for traveling actors in the countryside. We have to go where the action is, and right now, the action is in London. We have a new Queen, and she is the talk of the country. If she’ll be in London—”
“Then we should be as well,” I finished his sentence for him. I looked off to the South and tried not to betray the rush of excitement that was building within me. First Master James was thinking of promoting me to captain the street troupe . . . and now we were going to London! I felt my entire world unspooling before me, like a skein of golden thread.
“To London,” he said, raising his glass again.
I lifted mine to meet his. “To London,” I said. “Who knows what adventures await us there?”
Who knew, indeed.
Meg Fellowes’s adventures continue in
Maid of Secrets,
a Maids of Honor novel.
APRIL 1559
LONDON, ENGLAND
Mule-brained Tommy Farrow would ruin everything.
To my credit I didn’
t even flinch as I caught sight of the boy’s white-blond hair bouncing through the crowd. I’d been trained better than that. But the fat purse I’d just lifted from an unsuspecting lord now felt too heavy in my hand. I shoved it deep into the folds of my overskirt with perhaps a bit more force than necessary.
Stepping away from my mark, I smiled easily and strolled forward a few lazy paces along the crowd’s edge; just another young English lady, out enjoying the day’s spectacle.
No one so much as glanced at me.
I ducked under a faded coronation banner that still whipped proudly above a milliner’s storefront, and paused to scan the knot of Londoners clumped together in the inn’s courtyard. Tommy wasn’t hard to spot.
Where is the silly little bit going?
The youngest—and by far the most hopeless—thief in the Golden Rose acting troupe could barely pick the pocket of the simplest of villagers, but this was Londontown. With his mutton hands and clumsy feet and a mouth that galloped well ahead of his brain, Tommy would be branded a thief before he’d bobbed his first lord. And then he’d be branded in fire, a white-hot poker pressed into the soft skin of his hand, forever announcing him a criminal.
My mouth tightened into a grim line. No child deserved that. No matter how straw-headed.
I threaded my way through the gawkers, steadying my nerves by snipping off another loose bauble from a velvet sleeve as I passed. Then the tuft of blond hair abruptly changed course in the crowd, and panic squeezed my heart.
For Tommy, who couldn’t tie his own breeches without getting his fingers trapped, crowds were a disaster. The boy somehow always went after the one mark in the mob who’d never be taken in by his sweet-faced charm and big blue eyes.
Show Tommy a hundred people to fleece, and he’d always choose the worst. It was almost a gift.
Truly. I’d seen the boy target magistrates and nuns.
Now, judging from the purposeful stride of his small, pumping body, Tommy had already picked out his next unlikely victim. I followed the child’s line of sight. And then I did flinch.
A Thief Before Christmas Page 5
