“Thirty-six.”
“Well, then. You want to be alive to present this book to the queen in person, don’t you? And the next one, and the next. A dead author is no use to me.”
I laughed, but my mind flashed back to that stone rolling in the dust at my feet and the unseen presence that had been haunting my steps for the past days. If my pursuer had his way, I would be lucky to see the autumn, plague or no plague.
I LEFT CHARLEWOOD’S house with a lighter heart, encouraged by his enthusiasm. The streets around the Barbican were still unusually empty, the sun overhead bleaching colour from the red-brick houses that lined the roads. Behind the rows of chimney stacks, the sky was a deep cloudless cobalt, almost as blue as the skies I remembered from childhood over the village of Nola, at the foot of Monte Cicada. I had not known England was capable of such a sky. My shirt stuck to my back with sweat and I loosened the lacing of it at the collar as I walked, glad that I had always avoided the English fashion for wide starched neck-ruffs; the young dandies at court must be desperately uncomfortable in this heat.
As I crossed Aldersgate Street and was about to turn into Long Lane, I sensed it again: a flicker of a shadow, the merest hint of a sound. I spun around, hand to my knife, and for the first time I caught a glimpse of him, perhaps fifty yards away, just before he vanished between two houses. I had no time to make out more than a tall, thin figure, but my blood boiled and before I had given thought to my actions I was hurling myself after him, feet pounding through the dust; if I must fight, so be it, but I would not be made to live this way any longer, always looking over my shoulder, feeling vulnerable at every corner like a hunted creature.
Slipping into the alley where he had disappeared, I spotted the fellow running out of the far end, heading northwards up Aldersgate Street. I forced my legs to a faster pace; I may not be excessively tall like some of these Englishmen, but I am lean and wiry and can move at a clip when I choose. Emerging from between houses, I saw him clearly and realised with a sinking feeling that he was heading towards the Charterhouse. But I was too fired up and too determined to shake him out of this cowardly pursuit to worry about the Howards.
As I drew closer, he scuttled out of sight around the corner, keeping close to the boundary wall that enclosed the maze of old buildings. All I had seen of him was that he wore a brown jerkin and breeches and a cloth cap pulled down low over his ears, but even at a distance he didn’t look like the man I had expected to see, the one I feared was after me—unless the man in question had lost a lot of weight since the previous autumn.
I had no time for such considerations, though; as I rounded the corner, my quarry was attempting to scale a low wall that separated the lane from Pardon Churchyard, the old plague burial ground that formed part of the Charterhouse lands. He threw himself over; I scrambled up in pursuit, landed on the other side, and then I had a clear view of him across the graveyard, with no more buildings to hide behind. He moved nimbly, dodging tussocks of grass and the crumbled remains of old headstones, aiming for the wall on the far side and the backs of the houses on Wilderness Row. With one determined burst of speed, I gained on him enough to grab at his jerkin before he reached the wall. He twisted away, the fabric slipped from between my fingers; my foot turned on a rabbit hole in the bank and I almost fell, but just as he jumped for the wall, I threw myself at him, caught his leg, and pulled him to the ground. He fought viciously, lashing out with his fists, but I was the stronger, and once I had him by the wrists it was no great effort to pin him facedown in the grass and keep him there by kneeling astride him until his struggle subsided and he lay still.
His cap had come off in the tussle but he pressed his face into the grass; I grasped him roughly by the hair and pulled his head up so that I could see his face. I was not sure which of us cried out the louder.
“
“What?”
“Get off my hair,” she hissed through her teeth.
Startled, I realised I was still gripping her hair in my fist. I released her and her head sank back to the grass, as if it were too heavy to hold up.
“Sophia Underhill,” I repeated in a whisper, hardly daring to speak her name aloud in case she should vanish. “What the Devil …?”
She twisted her face to look up at me, blinked sadly, and looked away.
“No. Sophia Underhill is dead.”
Chapter 2
We walked side by side down Long Lane towards Smithfield Market. She said nothing, her boy’s cap pulled low over her eyes once more, and I did not press her. She seemed so dramatically altered since I had last seen her, waving goodbye to me from an upstairs window in her father’s lodgings, that I could only guess at the circumstances that might have brought her to London in such a state. But I knew that bombarding her with questions would be the surest way to make her retreat from me. I stole a sideways glance as we walked in search of a tavern; her beauty seemed undiminished, even enhanced by her gauntness, because it lent her an air of fragility. I had to remind myself that in Oxford Sophia had not shared my feelings; her heart had been entangled elsewhere. Yet she had come to London to seek me out, or so it appeared. I could only be patient and wait to hear her story, if she was inclined to tell it.
As we neared the marketplace, the bleating and bellowing of livestock rose into the air with the sharp tang of animal dung, fermenting in the heat. Fear of plague had not stopped the business of commerce here, and we made our way around the edge of the pens where cattle and sheep jostled in their confinement and pressed up to the fences, snuffling frantically, while farmers and butchers bartered and haggled over prices. Sophia covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve as we passed the animals; I was more intent on watching where I was putting my feet. At the entrance to St. Sepulchre’s Lane, which the market traders called Pie Corner, gaudy painted tavern signs hung from the houses and a couple of girls waited listlessly in the shade, trays of sweating pies slung around their necks. I indicated the tavern on the corner, under the sign of the Cross Keys. On the threshold, Sophia hesitated and laid a hand on my arm.
“My name is Kit,” she whispered. “I am come to London to look for work, if anyone asks.”
I stopped, my hand on the door, and stared at her, searching her face. These were the first words she had spoken since announcing her own death in the churchyard. She looked back at me with earnest eyes and in that moment I recognised her haunted, fugitive look and cursed myself for being so stupid. She was on the run from something, or someone; this was why she was disguised as a boy. I knew that look only too well; once I had spent three years travelling through Italy under a different name. I understood what it meant to be a fugitive: always moving on, never trusting a soul, never knowing if the next town where you stopped for food or shelter might be the place they finally caught up with you. I nodded briefly, and held the door open for her.
“Well, come on then, Kit. You look as if you need feeding up.”
The tavern was a functional place, catering for the needs of the market traders; the taproom smelled as strongly of animals as the square outside, but I found the corner of a bench by a window and ordered some barley bread and a jug of ale. I leaned back against the wall and watched Sophia as she hunched into herself, tugging her dirty cap farther down and glancing around nervously. When the bread arrived, she tore into it as if she had not eaten in some time. I sipped my ale slowly and waited for her to speak.
“Forgive me,” she said with her mouth full, wiping crumbs away with the back of her hand. “I have forgotten all my manners, as you see. Whatever would my father say?”
There was no mistaking the bitterness in her tone. Her father, the rector of Lincoln College, had disowned her when he discovered she was with child, and sent her to live with an aunt in Kent; this was the last I had heard of her. When I left Oxford she had given me the aunt’s address and asked me to write, but I had never received any reply.
“I wrote to you,” I said, eventually. She looked up and met my gaze.
