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Authors: Carolly Erickson
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spend but our coach did not stop at any of the shops or stalls where trims and buttons and stockings, foodstuffs, kerchiefs and trinkets were being offered for sale.
“’Tis worth your life to stop in the streets of London, miss,” one of the ostlers called up to me when I asked if we might pause long enough for me to buy a muffin and a pair of doeskin gloves. “The wild rogues that wander about would break your pate in a minute just to steal your purse. And the constables are never nearby to protect you.”
His warning seemed more than justified when we felt our coach jolt sharply and lean to one side. Before I could realize what had happened a dirty face peered in, and dirty hands reached towards me. A laborer or a beggar, by the look of him, with filthy hair spilling out from under a ragged cap. I drew back in alarm, but almost at once I heard the crack of a whip and saw that one of the guardsmen had cut the man down. He lay writhing amid the mud of the street. With a lurch the coach moved forward again.
“What happened? Who was that horrible-looking man?” It was Mary Sidford, who until then had said little to the rest of us.
“Some thief,” Malyn answered with a shudder. “I want to go back to Lambeth.”
But before we went back we were to see many more ragged folk, beggars and peddlers, low servants hurrying on errands for their masters, apprentices with tools hanging from their belts and scowls on their faces, flower-sellers, young and not-so-young women dressed in slatternly finery, strolling past workmen and soldiers as if to say, here I am, look at me, I am for sale.
We paused to let a religious procession pass, black-robed priests carrying large silver crosses and boys singing and chanting, their silvery voices carrying above the hubbub of commerce and the loud grinding of wheels over the cobblestones. Then we came to London Bridge, with its strong towers and ancient drawbridge, and paused to watch the river rushing under the old stone pillars, the grey water clogged with refuse and rotting timbers, dead dogs and cats and masses of floating rubble.
This, then, was the hub of the realm, the center of the universe. Astounding in its size and noise and stench, yes: I had to agree. But almost equally astounding in its urgent vivid life and color. A dangerous, exciting place pulsing with vitality. A place where, I felt, anything could happen.
FOUR
“ FRANCIS Dereham,” he said with a bow.
He was more fair than dark, with thick, light brown wavy hair that brushed his neck and clear, light blue eyes with thick long lashes. His skin was pink and healthy and without the pits or pockmarks that disfigured so many of the men of the household. I wondered whether his skin was smooth and unscarred all over. My hands itched to touch him, to feel the softness of his skin, he was so beautiful.
“I’ve brought you some partridges, and some custard tarts,” he said with a smile. “You do like custard tarts, do you not?”
With a sweep of one liveried arm he indicated a basket from which came the rich aromas of roasted fowl, butter and onion, and sugary desserts. I saw that the basket had been carefully packed with linens and embroidered napery, wax candles and a candelabra to hold them.
“Anything you bring me, Master Dereham, will be most welcome. I see that you have gone to a great deal of trouble.”
He had been in my thoughts ever since the night of Uncle Thomas’s banquet in honor of the Clevan ambassador, when I had watched him dance with the clumsy foreign woman in the ugly, ill-fitting gown. I had found out his name, and knew that he was one of Grandma Agnes’s gentlemen pensioners, and that he was about twenty-four years old (so Joan believed)—much older than I for I had yet to turn eighteen. He was a gentleman’s son, Joan said, a Howard relation by marriage. And he was much admired by the women of the Lambeth household, some of whom were thought to be his conquests.
Yet here he was, in
“’Tis worth your life to stop in the streets of London, miss,” one of the ostlers called up to me when I asked if we might pause long enough for me to buy a muffin and a pair of doeskin gloves. “The wild rogues that wander about would break your pate in a minute just to steal your purse. And the constables are never nearby to protect you.”
His warning seemed more than justified when we felt our coach jolt sharply and lean to one side. Before I could realize what had happened a dirty face peered in, and dirty hands reached towards me. A laborer or a beggar, by the look of him, with filthy hair spilling out from under a ragged cap. I drew back in alarm, but almost at once I heard the crack of a whip and saw that one of the guardsmen had cut the man down. He lay writhing amid the mud of the street. With a lurch the coach moved forward again.
“What happened? Who was that horrible-looking man?” It was Mary Sidford, who until then had said little to the rest of us.
“Some thief,” Malyn answered with a shudder. “I want to go back to Lambeth.”
But before we went back we were to see many more ragged folk, beggars and peddlers, low servants hurrying on errands for their masters, apprentices with tools hanging from their belts and scowls on their faces, flower-sellers, young and not-so-young women dressed in slatternly finery, strolling past workmen and soldiers as if to say, here I am, look at me, I am for sale.
We paused to let a religious procession pass, black-robed priests carrying large silver crosses and boys singing and chanting, their silvery voices carrying above the hubbub of commerce and the loud grinding of wheels over the cobblestones. Then we came to London Bridge, with its strong towers and ancient drawbridge, and paused to watch the river rushing under the old stone pillars, the grey water clogged with refuse and rotting timbers, dead dogs and cats and masses of floating rubble.
This, then, was the hub of the realm, the center of the universe. Astounding in its size and noise and stench, yes: I had to agree. But almost equally astounding in its urgent vivid life and color. A dangerous, exciting place pulsing with vitality. A place where, I felt, anything could happen.
FOUR
“ FRANCIS Dereham,” he said with a bow.
He was more fair than dark, with thick, light brown wavy hair that brushed his neck and clear, light blue eyes with thick long lashes. His skin was pink and healthy and without the pits or pockmarks that disfigured so many of the men of the household. I wondered whether his skin was smooth and unscarred all over. My hands itched to touch him, to feel the softness of his skin, he was so beautiful.
“I’ve brought you some partridges, and some custard tarts,” he said with a smile. “You do like custard tarts, do you not?”
With a sweep of one liveried arm he indicated a basket from which came the rich aromas of roasted fowl, butter and onion, and sugary desserts. I saw that the basket had been carefully packed with linens and embroidered napery, wax candles and a candelabra to hold them.
“Anything you bring me, Master Dereham, will be most welcome. I see that you have gone to a great deal of trouble.”
He had been in my thoughts ever since the night of Uncle Thomas’s banquet in honor of the Clevan ambassador, when I had watched him dance with the clumsy foreign woman in the ugly, ill-fitting gown. I had found out his name, and knew that he was one of Grandma Agnes’s gentlemen pensioners, and that he was about twenty-four years old (so Joan believed)—much older than I for I had yet to turn eighteen. He was a gentleman’s son, Joan said, a Howard relation by marriage. And he was much admired by the women of the Lambeth household, some of whom were thought to be his conquests.
Yet here he was, in
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