“So?”
“I’m not allowed to get married. Until my apprenticeship is over.”
“Odd’s fish. I hadn’t thought of that. Well, you’d best hurry it up, then. Sally’s certain to attract suitors at Court, and I won’t wait forever. What about you, Thomas?”
Tom stared in horror. “Me?”
“Surely you must have some girl who’s sweet on you.”
He turned red as an apple. “Oh, no. No, no. No.”
I smiled at Tom. My turn. “He’s being modest, sire. You should have seen the way the maids in Paris fawned over him.”
The king nodded. “How well I remember. Like vultures, they are.”
“There is a girl here in London who likes him,” I said. “Dorothy, the innkeeper’s daughter, who lives across from my shop. She’s been trying to catch Tom for some time.”
“Sounds excellent. Is she pretty?”
“Very,” I said, “but maybe a bit… aggressive.”
“How so?”
“Imagine a bear trying to open a jar of honey. And Tom’s the jar.”
The king doubled over in laughter. Tom buried his face in his hands. Lord Ashcombe just sighed and shook his head.
Charles wiped away tears and patted Tom on the knee. “Ah, you two. Have no fear, Thomas, I’ll find you someone suitable.”
“Perhaps, sire,” Lord Ashcombe said, “the betrothals can wait. Until the boys are no longer fourteen, at least.”
“Odd’s fish. I keep forgetting how young you are. You’ve just served me so well.” He clapped his hands. “Which brings me to the point. I promised you gifts.”
He turned serious. “You three, Sally included, accepted great danger in traveling to Paris, with no idea whom or what you might face. You did this at my request, and yet asked for nothing in return. You saved the life of my sister, Minette, which means more to me than my own—which you have saved, even so.
“I considered giving you titles, but that wouldn’t fit my plans for you at the moment. Therefore, instead, I have decided to provide you with a pension. Six hundred pounds per annum, divided between the three.”
Tom swayed in his chair, white with shock. I went dizzy myself, a low buzzing filling my head.
A pension?
Of six hundred pounds?
That meant Tom, Sally, and I would each be given two hundred pounds, every year.
A journeyman apothecary could hope to make a shilling a day. That worked out to around fifteen pounds a year. The king would be giving us—each, giving us each—thirteen times that.
Forever.
It was well known Charles was generous with money. He’d given a similar sum to the family who’d helped him escape the country fifteen years ago, when Cromwell’s troops had been hunting for his head. And yet this… I could barely breathe.
Tom stared, slack-jawed. “But you already gave me this hat.”
Again the king doubled over with laughter. “Odd’s fish, Thomas. I must invite you to all my parties.”
Head still buzzing, I asked, “Does Sally know?”
“She was informed last night,” Charles said, “upon her arrival at Berkshire House. I would have liked to have told her myself, but circumstances didn’t permit.”
I wished I’d been there to see it. She should be here, with us; she deserved to be.
And as that occurred to me, even dizzy as I was, it struck me as odd. Telling Sally about the pension could have waited a day. He could have brought her here this morning, told us all together.
But he hadn’t. What’s more, we’d been told there weren’t any spare quarters. Yet an irate knight had been displaced from his parlor to accommodate Tom and me. The same could have been done for Sally, if Charles had wished it. Which meant…
“You don’t want Sally at Whitehall,” I said suddenly.
The king looked at me sharply but said nothing.
Barbara the spaniel decided she wanted more than a scratch and climbed carefully into my lap. I stroked her fur, long and soft. “Is it because of Mary’s murder?” I wondered aloud. “No, it can’t be. Not alone. There must have been something else.”
Now Charles looked at Lord Ashcombe.
The King’s Warden shrugged. “You wanted him sticking his nose in.”
“Clearly, I was right,” the king said, and he nodded for Lord Ashcombe to tell me.
Ashcombe dismissed the two servants, shutting the door behind them. Then he spoke.
“There have been two murders,” he said quietly. “Another servant girl was found in the Thames, the day before we returned to London. She’d been stabbed in the back, like Mary, but since she was fished out east of the Tower, no one imagined the murder had happened in the palace. It was assumed she’d gone to market and fallen afoul of thieves. Given yesterday’s circumstances, it’s fair to assume the deaths are connected—that she was killed here, and her body dumped in the river.”
“Was it done with the same type of blade?” Tom asked nervously.
“No blade was found in the body.” Lord Ashcombe shrugged. “Could have washed out in the Thames.”
I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to bring up here, but I did anyway. “There was a letter waiting for me at Blackthorn,” I began, and the king nodded.
“Richard already told me,” he said. “That fits in well with my plans.”
“Sire?”
“I want you to meet someone today.”
“Of course, sire.” I looked from him to Lord Ashcombe. “May I ask whom?”
The king smiled. “Your new master.”
CHAPTER
11
I DREW A BREATH. “MY… new master?”
“It’s clear the Apothecaries’ Guild was never going to arrange it,” Charles said. “So I decided to take care of it myself.”
I didn’t know what to say. In a way, this was an even bigger shock than the pension.
My stomach churned. Part of me had wished for this to happen. To have a new master. To be back in the workshop as an apprentice. To return to the life I’d once known. The life I’d never imagined at Cripplegate, the life I’d discovered I never wanted to leave.
And yet… it wasn’t just being an apothecary’s apprentice I wanted. It was being Master Benedict’s.
And I could never return to
