“I do most heartily apologise and beg your pardon,” replied Cosimo. “But, seeing as you are awake now, might I purchase the bread? Any old loaf will do.”
“Hold yer water, then,” grumbled Thomas the baker. He shuffled back inside, reappearing a few moments later with a round lump of bread. “That’s a ha’penny to you.”
“Here’s tuppence for your trouble,” said Cosimo, passing over the coins. “You can thank me later.”
“Tch!” replied the baker, and slammed the door.
Cosimo returned to the coach with the bread under his arm. “That should do it very nicely,” he chortled, climbing back into the coach. “Drive on!”
As the coach jolted to a start once more, Kit puzzled over the meaning of the charade he had just witnessed. Finally, when he could no longer help himself, he asked, “What was all that about? What do you want with stale bread?”
“Oh, this?” His great-grandfather glanced at the loaf beside him on the seat. “But I don’t want it at all.”
With that, he took the loaf and, calling, “Free bread!” tossed it from the carriage to a clutch of poorly dressed women who had gathered around a lantern that cast a pale circle of light onto their bare heads and shoulders. One of them caught the loaf and at once began dividing it up among the others. “Thank-ee!” she called with a gap- toothed smile.
“Don’t you remember anything you learned in school?” asked Cosimo.
“Not much,” confessed Kit.
“Second of September… year 1666… Pudding Lane? No?”
“Sorry, not with you.” Neither the date nor the place rang any bells.
“Why, it’s the Great Fire, dear boy. Never heard of it? What do they teach in school these days?”
“That I’ve heard of.” Kit thought for a moment. “So, by waking the baker you’ve prevented the fire-is that it?”
“Well done! There might be hope for you yet.”
“But isn’t that hazardous-messing with events?”
“Well, why not?”
“You’re changing the course of history. I thought that sort of thing was strictly forbidden.”
“Forbidden by whom?” inquired Cosimo. “Who’s to say the reality in which we find ourselves is the best one possible?”
“Yes, but-” Kit objected.
“See here, if a simple act of kindness or generosity, such as buying a loaf of bread for some poor working women, can mean that wholesale death and destruction will be avoided-why, a man would be a monster who had it in his power to alleviate all that suffering yet stood by and did nothing.”
The thought of messing about with history occupied Kit until the coach rolled up outside a large torch-lit house with a painted sign hanging above the door. The sign read THE POPE’S NOSE, and had a picture of-it was difficult to tell in the flickering light of the torches-what appeared to be the plucked rear end of a somewhat startled goose.
“Ah, here we are, gentlemen!” cried Sir Henry, snatching up his walking stick and leaping to his feet the moment the coach creaked to a stop. “This is my preferred chophouse. The food is uncommonly good, but the place is ferociously noisy, I fear, and likely to be crowded. I do hope you will not mind.”
“Not in the least,” replied Cosimo. “As usual, Sir Henry, you have anticipated my desires precisely. Lead on!”
They stepped from the landau and marched up to the public eating house arm in arm, with Kit bringing up the rear. As they approached the entrance, Kit caught Cosimo’s elbow and pulled him back for a word. “Look, I’m hungry as anything-but what’s going on here? Aren’t we worried about Wilhelmina? I thought it was important to find her.”
“Rest assured, dear boy, it is my main concern and the focus of all our efforts. Trust me. We are definitely working on it. But it will do no one any good if we starve ourselves into a state of mental and physical exhaustion. We’ve got to keep up our strength and acuity, do we not?”
“I suppose so,” Kit allowed dubiously.
“And does not Sir Henry strike you as exactly the sort of ally who might aid our search?”
“I guess so.”
“Well then!” Cosimo waved him through the wide-open door.
The ground floor of the house was given to two large public rooms with smaller, more private chambers upstairs. They were met inside the door by a red-faced man in a shabby leather jerkin with a greasy white apron around his more-than-ample middle and a sweat-stained blue scarf knotted around his neck. A limp cap of folded linen, balanced atop his round head, was listing to the side and causing him to hold his head at an angle. “Welcome, gentlemen! Come in! Come in! I am honoured, good sirs. Honoured, I declare.” He clapped his hands, and a boy came running and offered to take charge of any hats, cloaks, swords, or pistols they might wish to shed for the evening.
They handed over their hats, and the landlord gave a flick of his hand and sent the boy away. “I have prepared your customary room, Sir Henry. The fire is made up and fresh cloth is laid.”
“Thank you, William, but we will begin down here,” declared Sir Henry, indicating the large open room before them. “I feel like eating in company tonight. If you please, we will make our way upstairs in due course.”
“Certainly, sir,” replied the landlord. “Whatever your pleasure. Right this way.” He led them into the room, as into a den noisy with feasting lions. They passed among three long tables crowded with other diners, of which there were perhaps twenty or so, all munching and chomping with true abandon. Lord Castlemain appeared to know many of these, and he paused often to exchange a greeting or a word, shaking hands and bowing, before moving on.
The landlord conducted them to a small table near the hearth where a coal fire burned brightly in the grate. They settled into large, heavy carvers, and Kit surveyed the table, which was spread with a spotted and stained blue tablecloth and white napkins folded into vaguely boatlike shapes. There were no utensils, so he reached for the napkin closest to him, took it, and shook it out just as a gangly young adolescent wearing a faded, much-stained yellow turban approached the table and plunked down three wide-bottomed crockery jars overflowing with frothy ale. Sir Henry raised the jar before him and cried, “To friends old and new! May they always remain true!”
“Was hael! ” answered Cosimo, and drank.
The ale, though flat, was sweet and nutty with a warming flavour of cloves. Very nice, Kit decided, sipping liberally from the jar. Meanwhile, the turbaned lad had begun laying wooden bowls of soup before them. Sir Henry lowered his face to the bowl and sniffed. “Ah! Periwinkle! My favourite.” Taking a large silver spoon from an inner pocket of his coat, he began to ladle soup into his mouth.
As no other spoons-or anything else-seemed to be forthcoming, Kit simply gazed at his watery reflection in the clear, tawny liquid.
“Not to your liking, my friends?”
“Far from it!” remarked Cosimo. “I’m terribly sorry, Sir Henry, but in our haste to meet you we seem to have come away from the house without our spoons.”
“Quite,” agreed Kit.
“We shall soon put that to rights,” said Sir Henry. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers. “Two of your best spoons for my friends here, William, if you please.”
“Right away, Sir Henry!” cried William, shouting to make himself heard above the general din. He returned on the trot bearing two large and well-wrought silver spoons. “Peter, or Paul?” asked the landlord, wiping the spoons on his soiled apron.
“Pardon?” replied Kit.
“Which saint, sir? Peter?” He held up a spoon. “Or, would you prefer Saint Paul?”
“Ah, um, yes,” said Kit, glancing at his great-grandfather for advice and receiving only an expectant nod. “Paul, I suppose. No! Make it Peter-definitely. It’s Peter for me all the way.”
“A very wise choice, sir,” replied the landlord, handing him one of the deep-bowled spoons that, on closer inspection, turned out to have a handle fashioned in the bearded likeness of said saint.
Kit dipped his utensil into the steaming broth and brought it to his tongue. To Kit’s untutored palate, the soup had the musky savour of seashells stewed with old socks. Unable to match Sir Henry for the gusto with which the nobleman attacked this delicacy, he sampled a few spoonfuls politely. While his companions slurped down the soup,
