The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(29)

"Yes, sir."

"Sunday afternoon again, at five o'clock?"

She stared up at him, hardly daring to believe, but there was no teasing look on his face. She had expected him to end their lessons together, after what she had just done. But why should he suspect her? She was just some boy to him, not a girl who might rival the mysterious Jane for his affections. She chided herself for thinking there could ever be anything but friendship between them.

"Sunday," she said. "At five."

On Saturday morning she accompanied Master Naismith on another business matter. He would not say where, but instructed her to wear her best suit. Another visit to Master Cutsnail? She hoped not – there was no good news for the merchant.

However, they turned north out of Thames Street, and a short walk up the hill brought them to the yard surrounding St Paul's Cathedral, where the chapmen had their stalls hung about with ballad sheets and stacked with books of all sizes. Here one could buy a family Bible or a volume of love sonnets, sundry classics in the original Latin and Greek or English versions of works by Machiavelli and Castiglione. There were even a few printed editions of plays; were they perhaps going to visit one of the printers who had their workshops in the streets around Paul's Yard?

Master Naismith turned left through Ludgate, however, taking them outside the city walls. In Fleet Street, Coby's eyes were drawn towards the dark bulk of Bridewell Prison on the bank of the Thames. She shuddered. If she were ever found out to be a girl in men's clothing, she could be whipped through the streets and condemned to that horrible place, to be locked up with all the other "disorderly women" of the city.

They walked on and Fleet Street became the Strand, the main road between the city of London and Westminster. On the riverward side stood many fine houses belonging to the greatest lords in the land: Arundel, Bedford, Somerset… and Suffolk, she realised with growing excitement. Their patron had built himself a grand new mansion at Charing Cross, to be close to Whitehall Palace in Westminster. She exchanged glances with Master Naismith, and he smiled.

"You have guessed our destination," he said. "We are to meet Thomas Lodge, the playwright engaged by our patron to compose a play perfectly suited to the Ambassador of Vinland." He smiled again and added, "Master Lodge has been to the New World."

The New World! It was one thing to meet skraylings who had journeyed so far, but an Englishman who had ventured across the Atlantic and returned safe was a rare marvel indeed. She wondered if he was as handsome as Master Catlyn.

They reached the western end of the Strand, where the ancient marble monument to Queen Eleanor dominated the confluence of three roads: the Strand, King Street and Cockspur Street. On the southern side nearest the river stood Suffolk House, its pale stone walls and many glazed windows rivalling the nearby Palace of Whitehall. They entered through a gatehouse into a large cobbled courtyard where servants hurried back and forth on the duke's business. On either side stood the apartments of the gentlemen retainers; the great hall, a single-storeyed building even taller than the wings, took up the entire south side of the courtyard.

"His Grace lives beyond the hall, in fine apartments beside the river," Master Naismith said. "I doubt we shall be invited into such rarefied company."

A man of about forty, wearing the duke's blue-and-white livery and a harassed expression, greeted Master Naismith as one well known to him, and they were shown through a door in the west wing and up a spiral stair to one of the apartments. Two men were waiting for them in the small but comfortable parlour. Coby immediately and with a sinking feeling recognised Master Dunfell; the other she assumed to be Master Lodge.

"Naismith, good to see you!" Lodge grasped Master Naismith's arm and shook it heartily.

Coby hung back in the shadows, eyeing the playwright with disappointment. She had expected a dashing adventurer with a taste for poetry, like Sir Walter Raleigh or Sir Philip Sidney, not this short scrubby-bearded fellow with a feverish glint to his gooseberry-green eyes.

"So, what do you have for us?" Master Naismith asked, once the pleasantries were over.

Lodge gestured for them to approach the table, which was covered in a chaotic layer of papers scrawled in a barely legible hand. She did not envy the scrivener who had to make a fair copy.

"My best play yet," he said. "I have entitled it The Queen of Faerieland."

"Based on Spenser, is it?"

"Better than that." Lodge fairly quivered with excitement, like a child bursting to tell a great secret.

"What Master Lodge is trying to say," Dunfell put in, "is that he has borrowed from his recent travels, not from another poet. This is a skrayling story put into English."

"Devil take you!" Lodge turned scarlet. "You have ruined the ending, you pinch-souled capon. Go back to your accounts, and leave the recounting of tales to poets!"

Dunfell stepped back a little from the table, but did not leave the room. His fixed expression suggested he was used to the playwright's temper.

Lodge turned back to Master Naismith.

"It is a story I heard in Antilia, an ancient legend of three brothers of the Pescamocarti and their love for the Queen of the Forest. I have transposed it to the city of Athens…"

Whilst the playwright and the actor-manager bent over the manuscript, Master Dunfell motioned Coby to one side.