The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(25)

"You sound as if you do not approve, sir," the boy said, eyeing him suspiciously.

"On the contrary," Mal replied, cursing his clumsy approach to the issue. "I am all for seizing any advantage in a fight. Now, where were we?"

By the end of the afternoon, Mal had a grasp of simple greetings and a few phrases that might be useful in the marketplace. From time to time he was even able to forget why he was learning all this and simply enjoy a pleasant afternoon in the company of a new friend.

"I am indebted to you and your master," he said, getting to his feet and brushing dead leaves from his clothing. "If there is anything else I can do…"

Hendricks stared at the glittering millstream for a long moment.

"Teach me to fight."

So, it was the other boys giving him grief, not the master.

"I doubt I can help you," Mal said, not unkindly. "You will not come up against many apprentices armed with rapiers."

The boy looked up, his expression unreadable. "Anything you can teach me… about being a man."

Mal smiled. "Now that you really must learn for yourself. But– " Something about the boy's air of desperation reminded him of himself at the same age. "Part of my training was in unarmed combat and dagger-play. Perhaps that would be of some use?"

Hendricks' eyes lit up and he nodded.

"Though I warn you," Mal added, "if you ever come up against a man with a knife, your best stratagem is to run."

"Run, sir?"

"Like all the demons of Hell are after you."

Coby sat by the stream for a long time after Master Catlyn had gone. What was the point in going back to the theatre, if there was no work for her to do? And then there was this business of fighting lessons. She could not imagine what had possessed her to ask him. She didn't even like the man. No, that was not true. She had been determined not to like him after the way he had behaved at Goody Watson's, but he had changed his tune since then, indeed had been all politeness this afternoon. Not at first, perhaps, but then after they sat down together, he had suddenly changed. Was it something she said? Did he… oh Lord, did he suspect?

And what if he does? a voice in the back of her mind asked. She had assumed he shared Faulkner's tastes, but what if she were wrong? She felt herself grow hot all over, and not from the sun. What if he tries to seduce me? She leant over the stream, trying to make out her reflection in the rippling surface. Stupid. Why would he be interested in a plain, skinny creature like me, when London teems with women far better supplied with feminine charms?

She threw a twig in the stream and watched it float away. No, he did not know, she was certain of it. He would not have agreed to teach her to fight if he knew her to be a girl. The thought should have been comforting, but somehow it was not. She sighed. Anyone would think she wanted to be found out, like the guilty man in the proverb, running from shadows, afraid of everyone and everything.

Well, that was not her. She had nothing to feel bad about, the rest of the world was to blame for forcing her into these desperate straits. Getting to her feet she marched back to the theatre. She would find something useful to do if it killed her.

Walking back along Bankside towards Deadman's Place, Mal wondered when he had stopped trying to get out of Leland's commission and started looking forward to it and, more to the point, why. The lessons with Baines and Hendricks provided new challenges, it was true, but was that all? Perhaps a part of him was just sick of running away. Very well, so be it.

After crossing London Bridge he walked eastwards along Thames Street, emerging on the lower slopes of Tower Hill. In daylight the fortress looked far less ominous than it had by night. The crenellations of the walls and towers had begun to crumble with age, and moss and weeds had taken hold in every crack. The former Great Hall stood open to the sky, its roof timbers bare as the ribs of dead men. Only the Lieutenant's House, whitewashed and in good repair, gave any indication the Tower remained in active use. Mal hoped the ambassador's accommodation was in a better state than the rest of the fortress, otherwise the skraylings might be sorely offended.

No sooner had he thought of the skraylings than his eye was drawn towards the stockade on the far side of the river. Within it could be seen many domed tents of some heavy fabric woven in the same patterns of interlocking triangles as the skraylings' tunics. A column of bluish smoke rose from somewhere near the centre. He set off down the hill at a lope, determined to cross the river before he could change his mind.

"Westward ho! Eastward ho!"

The familiar cries of the wherrymen echoed across the water.

"What's the nearest stair to the skrayling camp?" Mal shouted to one of them.

"That'll be Horseydown. Tuppence, an it please you, sir."

Mal fished two pennies out of his pocket and stepped aboard the little boat. It felt good to have money to spare again.

A few minutes later he disembarked at Horseydown Stairs, a hundred yards downriver from the stockade. Unlike elsewhere on the Thames, there were no wherries waiting to take passengers, only a small boat with a prow carved in the likeness of a seabird's head, moored to the jetty and unoccupied. He assumed it belonged to one of the skrayling merchant vessels that stood at anchor along the Southwark docks. He gave the wherryman an extra halfpenny for his inconvenience, and set off towards the stockade.