At the Queen's Summons

by Susan Wiggs

  “Have you, then?” His Lordship winked at the constable.

  “Oh, aye, sir, upon my word.” She hated it when gentlemen got into a playful mood. Their idea of play usually involved mutilating defenseless people or animals.

  “And who might this patron be?”

  “Why, Robert Dudley himself, the Earl of Leicester.” Pippa threw back her shoulders proudly. How clever of her to think of the queen’s perpetual favorite. She nudged the constable in the ribs, none too gently. “He’s the queen’s lover, you know, so you’d best not irritate me.”

  A few of her listeners’ mouths dropped open. The nobleman’s face drained to a sick gray hue; then hot color surged to his cheeks and jowls.

  The constable gripped Pippa by the ear. “You lose, rodent.” With a flourish, he indicated the haughty man. “That is the Earl of Leicester, and I don’t believe he’s ever seen you before.”

  “If I had, I would certainly remember,” said Leicester.

  She swallowed hard. “Can I change my mind?”

  “Please do,” Leicester invited.

  “My patron is actually Lord Shelbourne.” She eyed the men dubiously. “Er, he is still among the living, is he not?”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  Pippa breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, then. He is my patron. Now I had best be go—”

  “Not so fast.” The grip on her ear tightened. Tears burned her nose and eyes. “He is locked up in the Tower, his lands forfeit and his title attainted.”

  Pippa gasped. Her mouth formed an O.

  “I know,” said Leicester. “Oops.”

  For the first time, her aplomb flagged. Usually she was nimble enough of wit and fleet enough of foot to get out of these scrapes. The thought of the stocks loomed large in her mind. This time, she was nailed indeed.

  She decided to try a last ditch effort to gain a patron. Who? Lord Burghley? No, he was too old and humorless. Walsingham? No, not with his Puritan leanings. The queen herself, then. By the time Pippa’s claim could be verified, she would be long gone.

  Then she spied the tall stranger looming at the back of the throng. Though he was most certainly foreign, he watched her with an interest that might even be colored by sympathy. Perhaps he spoke no English.

  “Actually,” she said, “he is my patron.” She pointed in the direction of the foreigner. Be Dutch, she prayed silently. Or Swiss. Or drunk. Or stupid. Just play along.

  The earl and the constable swung around, craning their necks to see. They did not have far to crane. The stranger stood like an oak tree amid low weeds, head and shoulders taller, oddly placid as the usual St. Paul’s crowd surged and seethed and whispered around him.

  Pippa craned, too, getting her first close look at him. Their gazes locked. She, who had experienced practically everything in her uncounted years, felt a jolt of something so new and profound that she simply had no name for the feeling.

  His eyes were a glittering, sapphire blue, but it was not the color or the startling face from which the eyes stared that mattered. A mysterious force dwelt behind the eyes, or in their depths. Awareness flew between Pippa and the stranger; she felt it enter her, dive into her depths like sunlight breaking through shadow.

  Old Mab, the woman who had raised Pippa, would have called it magic.

  Old Mab would have been right, for once.

  The earl cupped his hands around his mouth. “You, sir!”

  The foreigner pressed a very large hand to his much larger chest and raised a questioning black brow.

  “Aye, sir,” called the earl. “This elvish female claims she is performing under your warrant. Is that so, sir?”

  The crowd waited. The earl and the constable waited. When they looked away from her, Pippa clasped her hands and looked pleadingly at the stranger. Her ear was going numb in the pinch of the constable.

  Pleading looks were her specialty. She had practiced them for years, using her large, pale eyes to prize coppers and crusts from passing strangers.

  The foreigner raised a hand. Into the alleyway behind him flooded a troop of—Pippa was not certain what they were.

  They moved about in a great mob like soldiers, but instead of tunics these men wore horrible gray animal hides, wolfskins by the look of them. They carried battleaxes with long handles. Some had shaved heads; others wore their hair loose and wild, tumbling over their brows.

  Everyone moved aside when they entered the yard. Pippa did not blame the Londoners for shrinking in fear. She would have shrunk herself, but for the iron grip of the constable.

  “Is that what the colleen said, then?” He strode forward. He spoke English, damn him. He had a very strange accent, but it was English.

  He was huge. As a rule, Pippa liked big men. Big men and big dogs. They seemed to have less need to swagger and boast and be cruel than small ones. This man actually had a slight swagger, but she realized it was his way of squeezing a path through the crowd.

  His hair was black. It gleamed in the morning light with shards of indigo and violet, flowing over his shoulders. A slim ebony strand was ornamented with a strap of rawhide and beads.

  Pippa chided herself for being fascinated by a tall man with sapphire eyes. She should be taking the opportunity to run for cover rather than gawking like a Bedlamite at the foreigner. At the very least, she should be cooking up a lie to explain how, without his knowledge, she had come to be under his protection.

  He reached the steps in front of the door, where she stood between the constable and Leicester. His flame-blue eyes glared at the constable until the man relinquished his grasp on Pippa’s ear.

  Sighing with relief, she rubbed the abused, throbbing ear.

  “I am Aidan,” the stranger said, “the O Donoghue Mór.”

  A Moor! Immediately Pippa fell to her knees and snatched the hem of his deep blue mantle, bringing the dusty silk to her lips. The fabric felt heavy and rich, smooth as water and as exotic as the man himself.

  “Do you not remember, Your Preeminence?” she cried, knowing important men adored honorary titles. “How you ever so tenderly extended your warrant of protection to my poor, downtrodden self so that I’d not starve?” As she rambled on, she found a most interesting bone-handled knife tucked into the cuff of his tall boot. Unable to resist, she stole it, her movements so fluid and furtive that no one saw her conceal it in her own boot.

  Her gaze traveled upward over a strong leg. The sight set off a curious tingling. Strapped to his thigh was a shortsword as sharp and dangerous looking as the man himself.

  “You said you did not wish me to suffer the tortures of Clink Prison, nor did you want my pitiful weight forever on your delicate conscience, making you terrified to burn in hell for eternity because you let a defenseless woman fall victim to—”

  “Yes,” said the Moor.

  She dropped his hem and stared up at him. “What?” she asked stupidly.

  “Yes indeed, I remember, Mistress…er—”

  “Trueheart,” she supplied helpfully, plucking a favorite name from the arsenal of her imagination. “Pippa Trueheart.”

  The Moor faced Leicester. The smaller man gaped up at him. “There you are, then,” said the black-haired lord. “Mistress Pippa Trueheart is performing under my warrant.”

  With a huge bear paw of a hand, he took her arm and brought her to her feet. “I do confess the little baggage is unmanageable at times and did slip away for today’s performance. From now on I shall keep her in closer tow.”

  Leicester nodded and stroked his narrow beard. “That would be most appreciated, my lord of Castleross.”

  The constable looked at the Moor’s huge escort. The members of the escort glared back, and the constable smiled nervously.

  The Moor turned and addressed his fierce servants in a tongue so foreign, so unfamiliar, that Pippa did not recognize a single syllable of it. That was odd, for she had a keen and discerning ear for languages.

  The skin-clad men marched out of the churchyard and clumped down P
aternoster Row. The lad who served as stirrup runner led the big horse away. The Moor took hold of Pippa’s arm.

  “Let’s go, a storin,” he said.

  “Why do you call me a storin?”

  “It is an endearment meaning ‘treasure.’”

  “Oh. No one’s ever called me a treasure before. A trial, perhaps.”

  His lilting accent and the scent of the wind that clung in his hair and mantle sent a thrill through her. She had never been rescued in her life, and certainly not by such a specimen as this black-haired lord.

  As they walked toward the low gate linking St. Paul’s with Cheapside, she looked sideways at him. “You seem rather nice for a Moor.” She passed through the gate he held open for her.

  “A Moor, you say? Mistress, sure and I am no Moor.”

  “But you said you were Aidan, the O Donoghue Moor.”

  He laughed. She stopped in her tracks. She earned her living by making people laugh, so she should be used to the sound of it, but this was different. His laughter was so deep and rich that she imagined she could actually see it, flowing like a banner of dark silk on the breeze.

  He threw back his great, shaggy head. She saw that he had a full set of teeth. The eyes, blazing blue like the hearts of flames, drew her in with that same compelling magic she had felt earlier.

  He was beginning to make her nervous.

  “Why do you laugh?” she asked.

  “Mór,” he said. “I am the O Donoghue Mór. It means ‘great.’”

  “Ah.” She nodded sagely, pretending she had known all along. “And are you?” She let her gaze travel the entire length of him, lingering on the more interesting parts.

  God was a woman, Pippa thought with sudden certainty. Only a woman would create a man like the O Donoghue, forming such toothsome parts into an even more delectable whole. “Aside from the obvious, I mean.”

  Mirth still glowed about him, though his laughter had ceased. He touched her cheek, a surprisingly tender gesture, and said, “That, a stor, depends on whom you ask.”

  The light, brief touch shook Pippa to the core, though she refused to show it. When people touched her, it was to box her ears or send her packing, not to caress and comfort.

  “And how does one address a man so great as yourself?” she asked in a teasing voice. “Your Worship? Your Excellency?” She winked. “Your Hugeness?”

  He laughed again. “For a lowly player, you know some big words. Saucy ones, too.”

  “I collect them. I’m a very fast learner.”

  “Not fast enough to stay out of trouble today, it seems.” He took her hand and continued walking eastward along Cheapside. They passed the pissing conduit and then the Eleanor Cross decked with gilded statues.

  Pippa saw the foreigner frowning up at them. “The Puritans mutilate the figures,” she explained, taking charge of his introduction to London. “They mislike graven images. At the Standard yonder, you might see real mutilated bodies. Dove said a murderer was executed Tuesday last.”

  When they reached the square pillar, they saw no corpse, but the usual motley assortment of students and ’prentices, convicts with branded faces, beggars, bawds, and a pair of soldiers tied to a cart and being flogged as they were conveyed to prison. Leavening all the grimness was the backdrop of Goldsmith Row, shiny white houses with black beams and gilt wooden statuary. The O Donoghue took it all in with quiet, thoughtful interest. He made no comment, though he discreetly passed coppers from his cupped hand to the beggars.

  From the corner of her eye, Pippa saw Dove and Mortlock standing by an upended barrel near the Old ’Change. They were running a game with weighted dice and hollow coins. They smiled and waved as if nothing had happened, as if they had not just deserted her in a moment of dire peril.

  She poked her nose in the air, haughty as any grande dame, and put her grubby hand on the arm of the great O Donoghue. Let Dove and Mort wonder and squirm with curiosity. She belonged to a lofty nobleman now. She belonged to the O Donoghue Mór.

  Aidan was wondering how to get rid of the girl. She trotted at his side, chattering away about riots and rebels and boat races down the Thames. There was precious little for him to do in London while the queen left him cooling his heels, but that did not mean he needed to amuse himself with a pixielike female from St. Paul’s.

  Still, there was the matter of his knife, which she had stolen while groveling at his hem. Perhaps he ought to let her keep it, though, as the price of a morning’s diversion. The lass was nothing if not wildly entertaining.

  He shot a glance sideways, and the sight of her clutched unexpectedly at his heart. She bounced along with all the pride of a child wearing her first pair of shoes. Yet beneath the grime on her face, he could see the smudges of sleeplessness under her soft green eyes, the hollows of her cheekbones, the quiet resignation that bespoke a thousand days of tacit, unprotesting hunger.

  By the staff of St. Brigid, he did not need this, any more than he had needed the furious royal summons to court in London.

  Yet here she was. And his heart was moved by the look of want in her wide eyes.

  “Have you eaten today?” he asked.

  “Only if you count my own words.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “No food has passed these lips in a fortnight.” She pretended to sway with weakness.

  “That is a lie,” Aidan said mildly.

  “A week?”

  “Also a lie.”

  “Since last night?” she said.

  “That I am likely to believe. You do not need to lie to win my sympathy.”

  “It’s a habit, like spitting. Sorry.”

  “Where can I get you a hearty meal, colleen?”

  Her eyes danced with anticipation. “Oh, there, Your Greatness.” She pointed across the way, past the ’Change, where armed guards flanked a chest of bullion. “The Nag’s Head Inn has good pies and they don’t water down their ale.”

  “Done.” He strode into the middle of the road. A few market carts jostled past. A herd of laughing, filthy children charged past in pursuit of a runaway pig, and a noisome knacker’s wagon, piled high with butchered horse parts, lumbered by. When at last the way seemed clear, Aidan grabbed Pippa’s hand and hurried her across.

  “Now,” he said, ducking beneath the low lintel of the doorway and drawing her inside. “Here we are.”

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. The tavern was nearly full despite the early hour. He took Pippa to a scarred table flanked by a pair of three-legged stools.

  He called for food and drink. The alewife slumped lazily by the fire as if loath to bestir herself. In high dudgeon, Pippa marched over to her. “Did you not hear His Lordship? He desires to be served now.” Puffed up with self-importance, she pointed out his rich mantle and the tunic beneath, decked in cut crystal points. The sight of a well-turned-out patron spurred the woman to bring the ale and pasties quickly.

  Pippa picked up her wooden drinking mug and drained nearly half of it, until he rapped on the bottom. “Slowly now. It won’t sit well on an empty stomach.”

  “If I drink enough, my stomach won’t care.” She set down the mug and dragged her sleeve across her mouth. A certain glazed brightness came over her eyes, and he felt a welling of discomfort, for it had not been his purpose to make her stupid with drink.

  “Eat something,” he urged her. She gave him a vague smile and picked up one of the pies. She ate methodically and without savor. The Sassenach were terrible cooks, Aidan thought, not for the first time.

  A hulking figure filled the doorway and plunged the tavern deeper into darkness. Aidan’s hand went for his dagger; then he remembered the girl still had it.

  As soon as the newcomer stepped inside, Aidan grinned and relaxed. He would need no weapon against this man.

  “Come sit you down, Donal Og,” he said in Gaelic, dragging a third stool to the table.

  Aidan was known far and wide as a man of prodigious siz
e, but his cousin dwarfed him. Donal Og had massive shoulders, legs like tree trunks and a broad, prominent brow that gave him the look of a simpleton. Nothing was farther from the truth. Donal Og was brilliant, wry and unfailingly loyal to Aidan.

  Pippa stopped chewing to gape at him.

  “This is Donal Og,” said Aidan. “The captain of my guard.”

  “Donal Og,” she repeated, her pronunciation perfect.

  “It means Donal the Small,” Donal Og explained.

  Her gaze measured his height. “Where?”

  “I was so dubbed at birth.”

  “Ah. That explains everything.” She smiled broadly. “I am honored. My name is Pippa Trueblood.”

  “The honor is my own, surely,” Donal Og said with faint irony in his voice.

  Aidan frowned. “I thought you said Trueheart.”

  She laughed. “Silly me. Perhaps I did.” She began licking grease and crumbs from her fingers.

  “Where,” Donal Og asked in Gaelic, “did you find that?”

  “St. Paul’s churchyard.”

  “The Sassenach will let anyone in their churches, even lunatics.” Donal Og held out a hand, and the alewife served him a mug of ale. “Is she as crazy as she looks?”

  Aidan kept a bland, pleasant smile on his face so the girl would not guess what they spoke of. “Probably.”

  “Are you Dutch?” she asked suddenly. “That language you’re using to discuss me—is it Dutch? Or Norse, perhaps?”

  Aidan laughed. “It is Gaelic. I thought you knew. We’re Irish.”

  Her eyes widened. “Irish. I’m told the Irish are wild and fierce and more papist than the pope himself.”

  Donal Og chuckled. “You’re right about the wild and fierce part.”

  She leaned forward with interest burning in her eyes. Aidan gamely ran a hand through his hair. “You’ll see I have no antlers, so you can lay to rest that myth. If you like, I’ll show you that I have no tail—”

  “I believe you,” she said quickly.

  “Don’t tell her about the blood sacrifices,” Donal Og warned.

  She gasped. “Blood sacrifices?”

  “Not lately,” Aidan concluded, his face deadly serious.