Into the Dim (19 page)

Letting go of Rachel, the red-haired, bucktoothed Charles hooted, “Stand down Eus, it's just a wench. A pretty wee black-haired one at that. Now we can each have one.”

“Well, well. And so we can.” The nasty grin on Eustace's pitted face sent a sharp new fear through me.

Something Phoebe had once said shivered through me.
Be mindful, Hope.
Men in the Middle Ages think nothing of rape. In most cases, it's not even a crime.

At the time, it had seemed ridiculous. But as Eustace sheathed his sword and took another step in my direction, the horror of it suddenly seemed all too real.

Rachel, seeing her shot, took it. She darted between the men and bolted toward the street. As she ran, her enormous golden eyes locked with mine.

Run,
she mouthed.

I
DIDN
'
T WAIT TO ASK QUESTIONS
.

Rachel shoved the pile of crates over to buy us a few, precious seconds. Her yellow veil billowed behind her as we sprinted through the narrow streets.

“This way,” she called.

Heavy footsteps pounded behind us, but I didn't look back. All my attention was focused on not tripping and stabbing myself with the knife still clenched in my hand.

Rachel ducked through a low doorway. The pungency of worked leather. Boxes of scraps and barrels of nails. A cobbler's shop. The owner's eyes went wide as Rachel muttered something to him in a language I thought was very old Hebrew. The man thrust his chin toward the curtained back of the shop.

“Come,” Rachel huffed. “There's another way out.”

In the tiny rear living quarters, a woman sat on a neatly made bed, nursing a baby. I had a second to register the aromas of fried garlic and onions before racing after Rachel toward the open door of a rear entrance.

I misjudged the door frame's height. My forehead slammed into the low, wooden beam. Green and white sparks bloomed through my sight. The blade dropped from my suddenly nerveless hand. Two beats later, the blinding pain hit and I nearly went to my knees.

Rachel panted. “We cannot tarry. You know not what Eustace Clarkson is capable of. We must away.”

I couldn't leave my dagger behind. Collum had given it to me. Had
trusted
me with it. I bent and groped for it through a nimbus of agony. I nicked my thumb but managed to snatch it up before Rachel dragged me out the door.

A crash, angry yells, and a cry of alarm sounded from inside the shop. Rachel slammed the door shut and wedged a stone in the jamb to slow them. With a firm grip under my elbow, she hauled me with her. At the entrance to the street, I heard the door crash open behind us.

Close. Too close.

Rachel gasped when a cloaked, hooded figure darted toward us from the mouth of the shadowed, narrow alley. I skidded into her back, almost knocking her over. I knew what she was thinking.
Trapped. We're trapped.
But when the person quickly shoved past us, Rachel wasted no time. She grabbed my arm, wrenching me out onto the main street. The ring of swords colliding sounded behind us, and I could barely keep up as Rachel hustled us away. Through a haze of red pain, something about the way the stranger had moved—agile, fluid—niggled at me.

My vision tripled and blurred as Rachel led me down one winding street after another.

When I faltered for the third time, she paused, her face going ashen as she panted. “Oh, I am sorry, mistress. You are bleeding. I—I didn't realize. May I take your blade from you? I'd hate for you to faint and fall upon it.”

When I swiped at my eyes to clear them, my fingers came away slick with blood.

“No,” I said, “I've got it.” Blinking, I blindly fumbled the blade back into its sheath.

Rachel scraped back strands of her chestnut hair before scanning my face. “We should get you home at once, mistress. Where do you live?”

Through pulsing throbs, I told her of Mabray House, and where I thought it was located.

“I know it well.” Rachel nodded. “But we must stop that bleeding first.”

She guided me to a stack of crates draped with fishing net. Layers of silvery scales littered the muddy ground, reflecting the wintry sky in a dull rainbow. The pain and pervasive stench of rotten fish made my gut roll and heave.

Kneeling before me, the girl's golden-brown eyes examined an area high on the left side of my forehead. “Forgive me, mistress, but you look quite the horror.”

Murmuring to herself, she reached into one of several leather bags hanging from the belt circling her narrow waist. Tipping a corked bottle onto soft cloth, she deftly cleaned away the blood and wound a long strip around my head. A fresh green smell of herbs and cut grass soothed the nausea but did little to ease the agony firing through my skull.

“Oh, but you must be in pain, mistress. Back at my grandfather's shop, I have the black poppy. It would help, though it be a far walk.”

Black poppy?
That was opium. Pure and undistilled. Like taking a shot of heroin. Tempting, but I wasn't quite to that point yet.

“N-no thank you,” I managed. “Just give me a minute, please.”

It was more than a minute. But eventually my pulse slowed. The pounding receded enough so that I could at least see again. I exhaled long and slow, then turned to Rachel. “Thank you.”

“You look better,” she said, her anxious expression clearing. “Mistress ah . . .”

“Hope,” I told her. “Hope Walton.”

“Well, Mistress Walton, I am Rachel bat Judah. And I thank you for saving me.” She offered me a hand up. “I think you are new to Londontown, yes?”

I smiled
. Oh, you have no idea.

I noticed she'd replaced the yellow silk veil. Her gown was lovely, made of fine, moss-colored wool, with amber sleeves that draped elegantly over her slim white hands. As she leaned down to pick up a dropped cloth, a chain of interlocking gold links popped out from inside her bodice. At the end swung a circular pendant set with an opal. A big one.

“It's good to meet you, too, Mistress Rachel.” I tore my gaze from the pendant. “And I thank you, too.”

We started down the street. Though wobbly at first, I soon got my feet back under me as we strolled across an open, cobbled area. There I got my first real look at the mighty Thames, and the famous London Bridge. The traffic increased as we neared the river. People lined up to cross the rickety wooden passage, while wagons and horses boarded flat-bottomed ferries that crossed dozens of times a day.

“Mistress Rachel!” A rangy soldier in his early twenties thundered up on a sorrel gelding. He dismounted in a leap and flew toward us. I lurched back, ready to run. Then I saw Rachel's expression.

Chain mail glinted on the boy's arms. A hood of the metallic rings draped from the back of his neck over a knee-length surcoat emblazoned with three gold lions on a bed of scarlet.

He looked Rachel frantically up and down. “God's bones, I heard you were running through the streets as though chased by demons. What happened?”

“William.” She breathed his name.

The look that passed between them stretched like a piece of taffy, sweet and long. William's eyes ate her up. Their bodies swayed toward each other, as if magnetized. Lined up with a dozen others, waiting to cross the bridge, an old man in a pointed yellow hat grunted and frowned at the two of them. Rachel's gaze broke first. Her eyes darted toward Yellow Hat, and she took a careful step back.

I had to admit, William was cute in a medieval boy-next-door way, with wide-set blue eyes and a nose that looked as though he'd broken it more than once. Rachel became suddenly interested in the cobbled ground. In the late-afternoon light, her cheeks flared red.

A Jewish girl and a Christian soldier in the Middle Ages.
Uh oh.

Yellow Hat kept eyeballing them and tugging on his impressive beard.

“Hello,” I said to break the awkward silence. “I take it you're William?”

The soldier tore his gaze from Rachel as if he just realized there were other people on the planet.

“Mistress Hope Walton.” Rachel hurried to introduce me, hands fluttering. “May I present William Lucie, newly made a sergeant in the queen's service, and . . . my friend.”

Something like a growl came from Yellow Hat. Rachel turned and dropped a hasty curtsy in his direction. “Good morrow, Master Yeshova,” she called. “Fine weather today, is it not?”

He grumbled a reply but turned back toward the shuffling line.

“Captain Lucie”—Rachel's tone turned carefully formal—“Mistress Walton is new to London. When she became injured, I simply offered my assistance.”

Her eyes pleaded with me to go along.

“Yes,” I agreed, getting it. “Yes. I fell and hit my head. Rachel here helped me.”

William studied me. When his tense features relaxed into a gentle grin, I got it. I understood why Rachel loved him. And oh, it was glaringly obvious he loved her, too. I felt the gentle pulses of electricity just standing near them.

For one instant, my thoughts turned to that moment on the Scottish mountain when Bran Cameron had skimmed the twig of heather behind my ear. I'd thought . . . but, no. That was stupid. I shook my head to dislodge the memory and smiled at William and Rachel.

William Lucie bowed in my direction. “Mistress Walton, if I can ever be of service—”

A wagon driver yelled for us to move on. William glanced toward his horse, his brow crinkled with conflict.

“Go back to your duties, Captain Lucie,” Rachel said softly. “We are fine.”

The soldier bit down on his lower lip and leaned toward her. When he noticed Master Yeshova's critical observation, he turned his movement into a courtly bow.

“Be careful, Mistress Rachel,” he said. “I worry when you roam the streets alone, especially with all these ruffians in town for the coronation.”

Rachel's chin lifted. “I can well care for myself, sir.”

“I know,” he said. “But I would not see harm come to you.”

William dragged his eyes from Rachel and bestowed one of his lovely smiles on me. “Well met, Mistress Walton. You won't find a better friend than Mistress Rachel.”

He mounted and rode away, his horse's hooves clip-clopping on the cobbles. I looked at Rachel, brows raised. But all her attention was fixed on the retreating boy.

I
N THIS SECTION OF THE RIVERFRONT AREA, MANY OF THE
large houses boasted stone walls with inset gates that protected the small interior courtyards. The evening air smelled better here, and the streets appeared cleaner.

I shivered as we strolled down the cobbled street, the sharp evening air penetrating cloak and gown to press frozen fingertips along my skin. My cheeks burned with it as the neighborhood around us quieted. In that odd, purplish nonlight of dusk, everything looked surreal and dream-like. Almost too clear to be real.

“So,” I said, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen since we left William, “you deliver medicine to the queen?”

“Oh yes.” Rachel nodded.”My grandfather was once a great physician. In his youth, he studied at the University of Salerno. When our people were forced out of France, they fled here. Though in England he is only allowed to be an apothecary.” She frowned at that. “Her Grace's old physician was too ill to travel to England. But Grandfather was once a classmate of his, and recommended him highly to the queen. Today, my
saba
tends an old widower who is near the end. Her Grace knows me, since I've gone with him before, so he sent me in his stead.”

I liked her grandfather immediately, a guy who chose to take care of a poor old man instead of a queen.

“What's wrong with Her Grace?”

Rachel chuckled. 'Tis but indigestion. Though she bellows as if she were dying. She's large with the king's second child, you know.” Rachel lowered her voice confidentially, but her white teeth gleamed as she grinned. “Do not speak of it, but I heard her confess to Sister Hectare that she worries she'll belch in the archbishop's face when he lays the crown upon her brow.”

As we walked, my new friend kept up a running commentary. But all I could think about was my mom, and how she might be close and I'd never know it. She might even live on this street, or just around the corner.

What if she's miles and miles away from here? Or . . . or worse?

“Mistress?”

I was startled out of my stupor. “Please,” I said, forcing a smile, “call me Hope. After all, you did save my life today.”

“After you stopped Eustace Clarkson from taking
my
honor.” Rachel shuddered inside her cloak. “Things have been worse for my people since Will—Captain Lucie—left the city watch for the queen's service. He protected us. Now, for some reason, Eustace has set his sights on me.” Her lips thinned in disgust. After a moment, though, she shook herself, as if trying to cast off the horror of what she'd endured. “So, you must be in London for the coronation, then?”

“No. Yes.” I stumbled on the uneven stones. I didn't fall, but my boot heel splurched down dead center in a cold pile of horse poop.

Perfect.

I fumbled for our cover story. “We came from the country so my brother can handle some of our father's business. While we're here, however, I hope to find my cousin. Sarah de Carlyle. I know she was in town a few months ago, but . . .”

I trailed off as an insidious hopelessness snaked through me.

How will we ever find her in three days? This place is too big. There're too many people. It's hopeless.

We stopped in front of a green-painted gate set into a rock wall. The words
MABRAY HOUSE
was chiseled into a flat stone. My stomach coiled into a knot.

Oh God, please let them be here.

“You know,” Rachel mused, “I could ask Captain Lucie about your cousin.” She tilted her head in thought. “I must make haste now, as I am very late delivering the queen's evening draught. But if you wish, you could come with me when I revisit the queen on the morrow. I do not know your cousin, mind. But the castle servants know everyone. They might be of help.”