The Prince of Lies (Night's Masque, #3)(103)

By way of demonstration he forced a laugh, as at a ribald jest from his companions. A Southwark matron sweeping her doorstep rolled her eyes at them and brushed the dirt more aggressively in their direction.

“I could cloud the memories of anyone who recognised us,” Sandy said.

“You’ll do no such thing. We might as well send out heralds to cry our names and whereabouts through the streets.”

“Jathekkil and Ilianwe would not even notice, if I did it skin-to-skin–”

“No.”

At last they came to the house Mal sought, in an alley not far from the courtyard where he and Percy had been ambushed. New and hastily built, its timbers were already warping in the damp English climate, and it leaned out so far there was scarcely an arm’s length between its upper storey and its neighbour across the alley.

He knocked on the door thrice, paused and knocked again. The door opened to reveal a girl of about sixteen, beggarly thin apart from a belly swollen with child. Mal ushered the others inside.

“Upstairs, back room,” he told them, slipping the girl a coin.

“What is this place?” Coby whispered. “A whorehouse?”

“Not exactly.”

He followed Sandy and Coby upstairs, into the dingy bedchamber. Its shutters stood open, though the sun was not yet high enough to clear the roofs. Lines of laundry hung from the sill, crossing the courtyard behind the house. Coby pulled back the bed-hangings and wrinkled her nose.

“This is a whorehouse.”

“It’s where the whores come for their confinements,” Mal said. “I pay them a small stipend, and they keep this room for me when I need it. What they do with it the rest of the time is none of my business.”

He did not add that some men found pregnant women arousing, and thus there was a little truth in his wife’s assessment. No point in sowing doubt in her mind, not when the breach between them was so recently healed.

The chest was under the bed where he had left it. He pulled it out, disabled the poisoned-needle trap and unlocked it.

“Now I believe you,” Coby murmured, squatting down next to him. “Isn’t that the box from Paris?”

“The very same.” He lifted out a tray full of documents and set it aside. Underneath was a pouch of money and another, slightly larger bag, which he handed to Coby. “Steel shot. I had some made up, when I first returned to England. Hoped you’d never have to use it.”

She grimaced. “I hope I don’t have to, either.”

He locked and rearmed the box and put it back in its place. There was nothing to do now but wait. He sat down on the edge of the bed and Coby drew a three-legged stool over and sat at his feet, leaning against one of his legs. He stroked her pale hair, schooling his heart to patience, though he wanted nothing more than to run through the streets in pursuit of his son’s abductors. He was no use to Kit dead, he reminded himself again and again.

The sun had crept above the rooftops and was just casting a tentative beam over the windowsill when Mal was jerked out of his reverie by the sound of knocking downstairs.

Coby jumped to her feet. “Surely no one knows where we are, do they?”

Mal opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. Muffled voices in the street, and another knock, urgent and demanding.

“Both of you, this way!” he hissed at his companions. “Bring the saddlebags. Hurry!”

They crept down the stairs as fast as they could, Mal leading the way. At the bottom he signalled silently to Coby, who nodded.

“Hold fast there!” she shrieked in her best Bankside accent, “I’m on the pisspot.”

“I don’t care if you’re on your deathbed, woman,” a muffled voice came from beyond the door as they fled down the passageway. “Open up, in the name of the King!”

Mal pushed through the end door, through a dark and smoky kitchen and out into the courtyard. Another alley led westwards. Mal edged down it and peered out into the street. No soldiers here yet. He waved his companions across the road into another alley that ran behind the Rose Theatre. Not far to the Globe now.



Coby slipped through the gates after Mal and allowed herself a sigh of relief as the familiar smells of the theatre yard enveloped her: sawdust, stale beer and the fear-sweat tang of nervous actors. Or perhaps that was just her imagination. Her heart was still pounding from their flight through the back alleys of Bankside.

“Why is the wagon not loaded yet?” Mal said to Gabriel, gesturing at the stack of chests and crates in the yard.

“We still have to get you lot past two sets of gate guards,” Gabriel replied. “And in truth, I do not trust the other actors not to give you away. The fewer who know you are with us, the safer you will be.”

He opened one of the chests, which proved to be empty but for a bit of sacking in the bottom. Coby dumped her saddlebags into it and stepped in after them. The last thing she saw as she folded herself down into the box was Mal arguing quietly with his twin. Sweet Jesu! Could Sandy never do anything without complaint?

Gabriel brought an armful of costumes and dumped them on top of her, then shut the chest. She could hear the straps being buckled tight, and wondered how she would get out if no one came to free her. Would she be able to lift the lid high enough to saw through the leather with her belt knife? She drew a slow breath to quell her rising panic. She was with friends and loved ones. She was doing this for Kit. Whatever happened, it was worth it.