Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(90)

“Absolutely not.” Between Raleigh, Chapman, and Marlowe, I’d met enough literary legends to last me a lifetime. The countess was the foremost woman of letters in the country, and Sir Philip Sidney’s sister. “I’m not ready for Mary Sidney.”

“Nor is Mary Sidney ready for you, Mistress Roydon, but I suspect that Henry is right. You will soon grow tired of Matthew’s friends and need to seek your own. Without them you will be prone to idleness and melancholy.” Walter nodded to Matthew. “You should invite Mary here to share supper.”

“The Blackfriars would come to a complete standstill if the Countess of Pembroke appeared on Water Lane. It would be far better to send Mistress Roydon to Baynard’s Castle. It’s just over the wall,” Marlowe said, eager to be rid of me.

“Diana would have to walk into the city,” Matthew said pointedly.

Marlowe gave a dismissive snort. “It’s the week between Christmas and New Year. Nobody will pay attention if two married women share a cup of wine and some gossip.”

“I’d be happy to take her,” Walter volunteered. “Perhaps Mary will want to know more about my venture in the New World.”

“You’ll have to ask the countess to invest in Virginia another time. If Diana goes, I’ll be with her.” Matthew’s eyes sharpened. “I wonder if Mary knows any witches?”

“She’s a woman, isn’t she? Of course she knows witches,” Marlowe said. “Shall I write to her, then, Matt?” Henry inquired.

“Thank you, Hal.” Matthew was clearly unconvinced of the merits of the plan. Then he sighed. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen her. Tell Mary we’ll call on her tomorrow.”

My initial reluctance to meet Mary Sidney faded as our rendezvous approached. The more I remembered—and discovered—about the Countess of Pembroke, the more excited I became.

Fran?oise was in a state of high anxiety about the visit, and she fussed over my clothes for hours. She fixed a particularly frothy ruff around the high neckline of a black velvet jacket that Maria had fashioned for me in France. She also cleaned and pressed my flattering russet gown with its bands of black velvet. It went well with the jacket and provided a jolt of color. Once I was dressed, Fran?oise pronounced me passable, though too severe and German-looking for her tastes.

I bolted down some stew filled with chunks of rabbit and barley at midday in an effort to speed our departure. Matthew took an interminable time sipping his wine and questioning me in Latin about my morning. His expression was devilish.

“If you’re trying to infuriate me, you’re succeeding!” I told him after a particularly convoluted question.

“Refero mihi in latine, quaeso,” Matthew said in a professorial tone. When I threw a hunk of bread at him, he laughed and ducked.

Henry Percy arrived just in time to catch the bread neatly with one hand. He returned it to the table without comment, smiled serenely, and asked if we were ready to depart.

Pierre materialized without a sound from the shadows near the entrance to the shoe shop and began walking up the street with a diffident air, his right hand firmly around the hilt of his dagger. When Matthew turned us toward the city, I looked up. There was St. Paul’s.

“I’m not likely to get lost with that in the neighborhood,” I murmured.

As we made our slow progress toward the cathedral, my senses grew accustomed to the chaos and it was possible to pick out individual sounds, smells, and sights. Bread baking. Coal fires. Wood smoke. Fermentation. Freshly washed garbage, courtesy of yesterday’s rains. Wet wool. I breathed deeply, making a mental note to stop telling my students that if you went back in time, you would be knocked over instantly by the foul smell. Apparently that wasn’t true, at least not in late December.

Men and women looked up from their work and out their windows with unabashed curiosity as we passed, bobbing their heads respectfully when they recognized Matthew and Henry. We stepped by a printing establishment, passed another where a barber was cutting a man’s hair, and skirted a busy workshop where hammers and heat indicated that someone was working in fine metals.

As the strangeness wore off, I was able to focus on what people were saying, the texture of their clothes, the expressions on their faces. Matthew had told me our neighborhood was full of foreigners, but it sounded like Babel. I turned my head. “What language is she speaking?” I whispered with a glance at a plump woman wearing a deep blue-green jacket trimmed with fur. It was, I noted, cut rather like my own.

“Some dialect of German,” said Matthew, lowering his head to mine so that I could hear him over the noise in the street.

We passed through the arch of an old gatehouse. The lane widened into a street that had managed against all odds to retain most of its paving. A sprawling, multistoried building to our right buzzed with activity.

“The Dominican priory,” Matthew explained. “When King Henry expelled the priests, it became a ruin, then a tenement. There’s no telling how many people are crammed in there now.” He glanced across the courtyard, where a listing stone-and-timber wall spanned the distance between the tenement and the back of another house. A sorry excuse for a door hung from a single set of hinges.

Matthew looked up at St. Paul’s and then down at me. His face softened. “To hell with caution. Come on.”

He steered me through an opening between a section of the old city wall and a house that looked as though it were about to tip its third story onto passersby. It was possible to make progress along the slim thoroughfare only because everyone was moving in the same direction: up, north, out. We were carried by the wave of humanity into another street, this one much wider than Water Lane. The noise increased, along with the crowds.