Читать книгу At The Queen's Summons - Сьюзен Виггс, Susan Wiggs - Страница 9

“How many noblemen does it take to light a candle?” asked a laughing voice.

Aidan O Donoghue lifted a hand to halt his escort. The English voice intrigued him. In the crowded London street behind him, his personal guard of a hundred gallowglass instantly stopped their purposeful march.

“How many?” someone yelled.

“Three!” came the shout from the center of St. Paul’s churchyard.

Aidan nudged his horse forward into the area around the great church. A sea of booksellers, paupers, tricksters, merchants and rogues seethed around him. He could see the speaker now, just barely, a little lightning bolt of mad energy on the church steps.

“One to call a servant to pour the sack—” she reeled in mock drunkenness “—one to beat the servant senseless, one to botch the job and one to blame it on the French.”

Her listeners hooted in derision. Then a man yelled, “That’s four, wench!”

Aidan flexed his legs to stand in the stirrups. Stirrups.Until a fortnight ago, he had never even used such a device, or a curbed bit, either. Perhaps, after all, there was some use in this visit to England. He could do without all the fancy draping Lord Lumley had insisted upon, though. Horses were horses in Ireland, not poppet dolls dressed in satin and plumes.

Elevated in the stirrups, he caught another glimpse of the girl: battered hat crammed down on matted hair, dirty, laughing face, ragged clothes.

“Well,” she said to the heckler, “I never said I could count, unless it be the coppers you toss me.”

A sly-looking man in tight hose joined her on the steps. “I saves me coppers for them what entertains me.” Boldly he snaked an arm around the girl and drew her snugly against him.

She slapped her hands against her cheeks in mock surprise. “Sir! Your codpiece flatters my vanity!”

The clink of coins punctuated a spate of laughter. A fat man near the girl held three flaming torches aloft. “Sixpence says you can’t juggle them.”

“Ninepence says I can, sure as Queen Elizabeth’s white arse sits upon the throne,” hollered the girl, deftly catching the torches and tossing them into motion.

Aidan guided his horse closer still. The huge Florentine mare he’d christened Grania earned a few dirty looks and muttered curses from people she nudged out of the way, but none challenged Aidan. Although the Londoners could not know he was the O Donoghue Mór of Ross Castle, they seemed to sense that he and his horse were not a pair to be trifled with. Perhaps it was the prodigious size of the horse; perhaps it was the dangerous, wintry blue of the rider’s eyes; but most likely it was the naked blade of the shortsword strapped to his thigh.

He left his massive escort milling outside the churchyard and passing the time by intimidating the Londoners. When he drew close to the street urchin, she was juggling the torches. The flaming brands formed a whirling frame for her grinning, sooty face.

She was an odd colleen, looking as if she had been stitched together from leftovers: wide eyes and wider mouth, button nose, and spiky hair better suited to a boy. She wore a chemise without a bodice, drooping canion trews and boots so old they might have been relics of the last century.

Yet her Maker had, by some foible, gifted her with the most dainty and deft pair of hands Aidan had ever seen. Round and round went the torches, and when she called for another, it joined the spinning circle with ease. Hand to hand she passed them, faster and faster. The big-bellied man then tossed her a shiny red apple.

She laughed and said, “Eh, Dove, you don’t fear I’ll tempt a man to sin?”

Her companion guffawed. “I like me wenches made of more than gristle and bad jests, Pippa girl.”

She took no offense, and while Aidan silently mouthed the strange name, someone tossed a dead fish into the spinning mix.

Aidan cringed, but the girl called Pippa took the new challenge in stride. “Seems I’ve caught one of your relatives, Mort,” she said to the man who had procured the fish.

The crowd roared its approval. A few red-heeled gentlemen dropped coins upon the steps. Even after a fortnight in London Aidan could ill understand the Sassenach. They would as lief toss coins to a street performer as see her hanged for vagrancy.

He felt something rub his leg and looked down. A sleepy-looking whore curved her hand around his thigh, fingers inching toward the horn-handled dagger tucked into the top of his boot.

With a dismissive smile, Aidan removed the whore’s hand. “You’ll find naught but ill fortune there, mistress.”

She drew back her lips in a sneer. The French pox had begun to rot her gums. “Irish,” she said, backing away. “Chaste as a priest, eh?”

Before he could respond, a high-pitched mew split the air, and the mare’s ears pricked up. Aidan spied a half-grown cat flying through the air toward Pippa.

“Juggle that,” a man shouted, howling with laughter.

“Jesu!” she said. Her hands seemed to be working of their own accord, keeping the objects spinning even as she tried to step out of range of the flying cat. But she caught it and managed to toss it from one hand to the next before the terrified creature leaped onto her head and clung there, claws sinking into the battered hat.

The hat slumped over the juggler’s eyes, blinding her.

Torches, apple and fish all clattered to the ground. The skinny man called Mort stomped out the flames. The fat man called Dove tried to help but trod instead upon the slimy fish. He skated forward, sleeves ripping as his pudgy arms cartwheeled. Just as he lost his balance, his flailing fist slammed into a spectator, who immediately threw himself into the brawl. With shouts of glee, others joined the fisticuffs. It was all Aidan could do to keep the mare from rearing.

Still blinded by the cat, the girl stumbled forward, hands outstretched. She caught the end of a bookseller’s cart. Cat and hat came off as one, and the crazed feline climbed a stack of tomes, toppling them into the mud of the churchyard.

“Imbecile!” the bookseller screeched, lunging at Pippa.

Dove had taken on several opponents by now. With a wet thwap, he slapped one across the face with the dead fish.

Pippa grasped the end of the cart and lifted. The remaining books slid down and slammed into the bookseller, knocking him backward to the ground.

“Where’s my ninepence?” she demanded, surveying the steps. People were too busy brawling to respond. She snatched up a stray copper and shoved it into the voluminous sack tied to her waist with a frayed rope. Then she fled, darting toward St. Paul’s Cross, a tall monument surrounded by an open rotunda. The bookseller followed, and now he had an ally—his wife, a formidable lady with arms like large hams.

“Come back here, you evil little monkey,” the wife roared. “This day shall be your last!”

Dove was enjoying the fight by now. He had his opponent by the neck and was playing with the man’s nose, slapping it back and forth and laughing.

Mort, his companion, was equally gleeful, squaring off with the whore who had approached Aidan earlier.

Pippa led a chase around the cross, the bookseller and his wife in hot pursuit.

More spectators joined in the fray. The horse backed up, eyes rolling in fear. Aidan made a crooning sound and stroked her neck, but he did not leave the square. He simply watched the fight and thought, for the hundredth time since his arrival, what a strange, foul and fascinating place London was. Just for a moment, he forgot the reason he had come. He turned spectator, giving his full attention to the antics of Pippa and her companions.

So this was St. Paul’s, the throbbing heart of the city. It was more meeting place than house of worship to be sure, and this did not surprise Aidan. The Sassenach were a people who clung feebly to an anemic faith; all the passion and pageantry had been bled out of the church by the Rome-hating Reformers.

The steeple, long broken but never yet repaired, shadowed a collection of beggars and merchants, strolling players and thieves, whores and tricksters. At the opposite corner of the square stood a gentleman and a liveried constable. Prodded by the screeched urging of the bookseller’s wife, they reluctantly moved in closer. The bookseller had cornered Pippa on the top step.

“Mort!” she cried. “Dove, help me!” Her companions promptly disappeared into the crowd. “Bastards!” she yelled after them. “Geld and splay you both!”

The bookseller barreled toward her. She stooped and picked up the dead fish, took keen aim at the bookseller and let fly.

The bookseller ducked. The fish struck the approaching gentleman in the face. Leaving slime and scales in its wake, the fish slid down the front of his silk brocade doublet and landed upon his slashed velvet court slippers.

Pippa froze and gawked in horror at the gentleman. “Oops,” she said.

“Indeed.” He fixed her with a fiery eye of accusation. Without even blinking, he motioned to the liveried constable.

“Sir,” he said.

“Aye, my lord?”

“Arrest this, er, rodent.”

Pippa took a step back, praying the way was clear to make a run for it. Her backside collided with the solid bulk of the bookseller’s wife.

“Oops,” Pippa said again. Her hopes sank like a weighted corpse in the Thames.

“Let’s see you worm your way out of this fix, missy,” the woman hissed in her ear.

“Thank you,” Pippa said cordially enough. “I intend to do just that.” She put on her brightest I’m-an-urchin grin and tugged at a forelock. She had recently hacked off her hair to get rid of a particularly stubborn case of lice. “Good morrow, Your Worship.”

The nobleman stroked his beard. “Not particularly good for you, scamp,” he said. “Are you aware of the laws against strolling players?”

Her gaze burning with indignation, she looked right and left. “Strolling players?” she said with heated outrage. “Who? Where? To God, what is this city coming to that such vermin as strolling players would run loose in the streets?”

As she huffed up her chest, she furtively searched the crowd for Dove and Mortlock. Like the fearless gallants she knew them to be, her companions had vanished.

For a moment, her gaze settled on the man on the horse. She had noticed him earlier, richly garbed and well mounted, with a foreign air about him she could not readily place.

“You mean to say,” the constable yelled at her, “that you are not a strolling player?”

“Sir, bite your tongue,” she fired off. “I’m…I am…” She took a deep breath and plucked out a ready falsehood. “An evangelist, my lord. Come to preach the Good Word to the unconverted of St. Paul’s.”

The haughty gentleman lifted one eyebrow high. “The Good Word, eh? And what might that be?”

“You know,” she said with an excess of patience. “The gospel according to Saint John.” She paused, searching her memory for more tidbits gleaned from days she had spent huddled and hiding in church. An inveterate collector of colorful words and phrases, she took pride in using them. “The pistol of Saint Paul to the fossils.”

“Ah.” The constable’s hands shot out. In a swift movement, he pinned her to the wall beside the si quis door. She twisted around to look longingly into the nave where the soaring stone pillars marched along Paul’s Walk. Like a well-seasoned rat, she knew every cranny and cubbyhole of the church. If she could get inside, she could find another way out.

“You’d best do better than that,” the constable said, “else I’ll nail your foolish ears to the stocks.”

She winced just thinking about it. “Very well, then.” She heaved a dramatic sigh. “Here’s the truth.”

A small crowd had gathered, probably hoping to see nails driven through her ears. The stranger on horseback dismounted, passed his reins to a stirrup runner and drew closer.

The lust for blood was universal, Pippa decided. But perhaps not. Despite his savage-looking face and flowing black hair, the man had an air of reckless splendor that fascinated her. She took a deep breath. “Actually, sir, I am a strolling player. But I have a nobleman’s warrant,” she finished triumphantly.

“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 Paternoster 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 size, 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.

“Certainly not on a waning moon,” Donal Og added.

But Pippa held herself a bit more stiffly and regarded them with wariness. She seemed to be measuring the distance from table to door with an expert eye. Aidan had the impression that she was quite accustomed to making swift escapes.

The alewife, no doubt drawn by the color of their money, sidled over with more brown ale. “Did ye know we’re Irish, ma’am?” Pippa asked in a perfect imitation of Aidan’s brogue.

The alewife’s brow lifted. “Do tell!”

“I’m a nun, see,” Pippa explained, “of the Order of Saint Dorcas of the Sisters of Virtue. We never forget a favor.”

Suitably impressed, the alewife curtsied with new respect and withdrew.

“So,” Aidan said, sipping his ale and hiding his amusement at her little performance. “We are Irish and you cannot decide on a family name for yourself. How is it that you came to be a strolling player in St. Paul’s?”

Donal Og muttered in Gaelic, “Really, my lord, could we not just leave? Not only is she crazy, she’s probably crawling with vermin. I’m sure I just saw a flea on her.”

“Ah, that’s a sad tale indeed,” Pippa said. “My father was a great war hero.”

“Which war?” Aidan asked.

“Which war do you suppose, my lord?”

“The Great Rebellion?” he guessed.

She nodded vigorously, her hacked-off hair bobbing. “The very one.”

“Ah,” said Aidan. “And your father was a hero, you say?”

“You’re as giddy as she,” grumbled Donal Og, still speaking Irish.

“Indeed he was,” Pippa declared. “He saved a whole garrison from slaughter.” A faraway look pervaded her eyes like morning mist. She looked past him, out the open door, at a patch of the sky visible between the gabled roofs of London. “He loved me more than life itself, and he wept when he had to leave me. Ah, that was a bleak day for the Truebeard family.”

“Trueheart,” Aidan corrected, curiously moved. The story was as false as a strumpet’s promise, yet the yearning he heard in the girl’s voice rang true.

“Trueheart,” she agreed easily. “I never saw my father again. My mother was carried off by pirates, and I was left quite alone to fend for myself.”

“I’ve heard enough,” said Donal Og. “Let’s go.”

Aidan ignored him. He found himself fascinated by the girl, watching as she helped herself to more ale and drank greedily, as if she would never get her fill.

Something about her touched him in a deep, hidden place he had long kept closed. It was in the very heart of him, embers of warmth that he guarded like a windbreak around a herdsman’s fire. No one was allowed to share the inner life of Aidan O Donoghue. He had permitted that just once—and he had been so thoroughly doused that he had frozen himself to sentiment, to trust, to joy, to hope—to everything that made life worth living.

Now here was this strange woman, unwashed and underfed, with naught but her large soft eyes and her vivid imagination to shield her from the harshness of the world. True, she was strong and saucy as any rollicking street performer, but not too far beneath the gamine surface, he saw something that fanned at the banked embers inside him. She possessed a subtle, waiflike vulnerability that was, at least on the surface, at odds with her saucy mouth and nail-hard shell of insouciance.

And, though her hair and face and ill-fitting garments were smeared with grease and ashes, a charming, guileless appeal shone through.

“That is quite a tale of woe,” Aidan commented.

Her smile favored them both like the sun bursting through stormclouds.

“Too bad it’s a pack of lies,” Donal Og said.

“I do wish you’d speak English,” she said. “It’s bad manners to leave me out.” She glared accusingly at him. “But I suppose, if you’re going to say I’m crazy and a liar and things of that sort, it is probably best to speak Irish.”

Seeing so huge a man squirm was an interesting spectacle. Donal Og shifted to and fro, causing the stool to creak. His hamlike face flushed to the ears. “Aye, well,” he said in English, “you need not perform for Aidan and me. For us, the truth is good enough.”

“I see.” She elongated her words as the effects of the ale flowed through her. “Then I should indeed confess the truth and tell you exactly who I am.”