Excerpt
Prologue: February, 1546
The landlord of the Ox with Flowers glanced up as Mathilda hurried through her duties, her pert face serious for once as she worked. “Got an appointment, Tildy?”
The pretty wench grinned impishly, perfect front teeth showing white in the rushlight. “What would you care, John, with that wife o’ yours always keepin’ an eye on ye?”
Throwing the sodden rag used to wipe the tables into a bucket in the corner, Mathilda surveyed the room, nodded satisfaction, and pulled her cloak from a peg on the wall.
“It’s a cold night out there,” John warned.
“It is that!” She gave him a saucy wave as she closed the door behind her.
Outside, Mathilda hardly noticed January’s cold bite, though the wind threatened to tear the woolen scarf from her head and lashed her heavy skirts around her ankles. When her handsome lover had proposed a private supper a day earlier, his accompanying look had promised more.
Although a country girl until recently, Mathilda was not backward. Things were not so different in London as elsewhere; she knew what was expected of girls like her and accepted that it was why men came to them. The lover she hurried to meet tonight was different, though. Well-dressed and well-spoken, he treated Tildy, only a runaway from Lincolnshire, like a lady, buying ribbons for her heavy mane of hair and stockings finer than any she’d ever owned. Lately he had hinted that he might set her up in a small house. A girl like her could not ask for more, but if she pleased him, why not a cozy home where he could visit when he liked and be her only man? She hated life at the Ox, although it was a convenient place to meet the men whose lust brought her extra money. Life there could not compare with the chance to be a rich man’s kept woman: secure, pampered beyond any standard Tildy had ever known.
As the landlord had warned, the night was cold. Stars appeared to hang directly overhead, their light adding no warmth, only breathtaking beauty had the girl stopped to consider it. Hurrying out of the inn’s courtyard and down the winding street, Tildy hardly felt the sharp gusts that wrapped around the corners of buildings set higgeldy-piggeldy, making the street sometimes wide, sometimes narrow. Expanding businesses often simply built into the street, making passers-by walk around the extensions.
Coming around a wall poorly built and probably unsafe, Tildy saw him ahead. Wrapped in a long, dark cloak, her lover waited at an alleyway. His eyes shone hungrily in the moonlight, as if he’d missed the sight of her. Tildy felt that burning gaze warm the air around them.
Knowing better than to touch him first, the girl simply stopped within reach of his arms, smiling rather self-consciously. “Little Mathilda.” His voice was hoarse with desire. She saw him look around, checking the street behind her and at his own back. No one. How afraid he is that he’ll be seen by one of his fine friends, she thought, caught with his doxy from the Shambles! A moment’s bitterness marred the meeting: even if Tildy got her little house, this man would always be ashamed of their liaison.
The thought faded as her lover’s arms went around her, drawing Tildy with him into the shadows of surrounding buildings. He kissed her with all the fire that had burned in his eyes moments before, hands caressing her throat gently. The girl consoled herself: I may be only a doxy, but he will be mine forever; I’ll make sure of it!
It was the last pleasant thought Mathilda had, for the hands on her white throat tightened in the darkness, squeezing until she fought to be free of them, uselessly, fleetingly. As her lifeless body sank, the same hands pulled her farther into the alley, where her body suffered such indignities that death had been a mercy after all.