by Ann Swinfen
‘It seems that I have, Master Burbage,’ I said, raising my rescued beer to pledge him.
Rikki settled at my feet with a sigh. He was more at home under an inn table than in the elegant surroundings of the Lopez house.
‘What can you give us to eat, Master Innkeeper?’ Burbage roared, throwing himself down on my other side and nearly knocking me into my beer again. ‘Roast unicorn? Larks’ tongues in wine? Stags hunted by moonlight, by the goddess Diana herself?’
‘Roast beef and onions, sir,’ said the inn keeper, po-faced, who looked as though he knew Burbage of old.
Simon winked at me across the table.
I leaned back, avoiding Burbage’s elbow, and stretched out my legs, careful not to disturb Rikki.
This – after all – this was my family.
Historical Note
The disaffected soldiers from the Portuguese expedition did in fact march on Bartholomew Fair in the summer of 1589, threatening to attack the fair and pay themselves by seizing goods from the stalls unless the authorities agreed to recompense them fairly for their service against Spain. They were fobbed off with false promises, driven away from the city by the armed London Trained Bands (the local militia), and four of their leaders were treacherously hanged. However, the theft of gunpowder and its use is my own addition to the story.
That same summer, Sir Francis Walsingham grew progressively more ill, but – as always – continued his demanding work, making no concessions to his physical condition.
The sources are inconsistent on the subject of the children of Sara and Ruy Lopez. They agree that five out of the nine survived. Ambrose, Anne and Anthony are documented, but some sources state that there were two other boys, others that there were two other girls. I have opted for the latter.
Richard (Dick) Whittington (1354-1423), Lord Mayor of London, established a lying-in ward for unmarried mothers at St Thomas’s Hospital in Southwark some hundred and seventy years before the time of this story. It was only one of many public works he financed to improve the lives of Londoners, particularly the poor, which were carried out both during his lifetime and through bequests in his will. Even today, nearly six hundred years later, there is a Whittington Charity, providing help to the needy.
The Author
Ann Swinfen spent her childhood partly in England and partly on the east coast of America. She was educated at Somerville College, Oxford, where she read Classics and Mathematics and married a fellow undergraduate, the historian David Swinfen. While bringing up their five children and studying for a postgraduate MSc in Mathematics and a BA and PhD in English Literature, she had a variety of jobs, including university lecturer, translator, freelance journalist and software designer. She served for nine years on the governing council of the Open University and for five years worked as a manager and editor in the technical author division of an international computer company, but gave up her full-time job to concentrate on her writing, while continuing part-time university teaching. In 1995 she founded Dundee Book Events, a voluntary organisation promoting books and authors to the general public.
Her first three novels, The Anniversary, The Travellers, and A Running Tide, all with a contemporary setting but also an historical resonance, were published by Random House, with translations into Dutch and German. The Testament of Mariam marks something of a departure. Set in the first century, it recounts, from an unusual perspective, one of the most famous and yet ambiguous stories in human history. At the same time it explores life under a foreign occupying force, in lands still torn by conflict to this day. Her second historical novel, Flood, is set in the fenlands of East Anglia during the seventeenth century, where the local people fought desperately to save their land from greedy and unscrupulous speculators.
Currently she is working on a late sixteenth century series, featuring a young Marrano physician who is recruited as a code-breaker and spy in Walsingham’s secret service. The first book in the series is The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez, the second is The Enterprise of England, the third is The Portuguese Affair and the fourth is Bartholomew Fair.
She now lives in Broughty Ferry, on the northeast coast of Scotland, with her husband, formerly vice-principal of the University of Dundee, a cocker spaniel, and a rescue kitten.
www.annswinfen.com
