“Are you giving me parenting tips from the animal kingdom?” I was thinking of his early research into wolves.
“As a matter of fact, I am. If this racket continues, they’ll have me to contend with, and I don’t nip. I bite.” Matthew glowered at the door as a particularly loud crash echoed through our rooms, followed by an abject “Sorry, mistress.”
“Thanks, but I’m not desperate enough to resort to obedience training. Yet,” I said, backing out of the room.
Two days of using my teacher voice and administering time-outs instilled some degree of order, but the children required a great deal of activity to keep their exuberance in check. I abandoned my books and papers and took them on long walks down Cheapside and into the suburbs to the west. We went to the markets with Fran?oise and watched the boats unloading their cargo at the docks in the Vintry. There we imagined where the goods came from and speculated about the origins of the crews.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling like a tourist and started feeling as though Elizabethan London was my home.
We were shopping Saturday morning at the Leadenhall Market, London’s premier emporium for fine groceries, when I saw a one-legged beggar. I was fishing a penny out of my bag for him when the children disappeared into a hatmaker’s shop. They could wreak havoc—expensive havoc—in such a place.
“Annie! Jack!” I called, dropping the penny in the man’s palm. “Keep your hands to yourselves!”
“You are far from home, Mistress Roydon,” a deep voice said. The skin on my back registered an icy stare, and I turned to find Andrew Hubbard.
“Father Hubbard,” I said. The beggar inched away.
Hubbard looked around. “Where is your woman?”
“If you are referring to Fran?oise, she is in the market,” I said tartly. “Annie is with me, too. I haven’t had a chance to thank you for sending her to us. She is a great help.”
“I understand you have met with Goody Alsop.”
I made no reply to this blatant fishing expedition.
“Since the Spanish came, she does not stir from her house unless there is good reason.”
Still I was silent. Hubbard smiled.
“I am not your enemy, mistress.”
“I didn’t say you were, Father Hubbard. But who I see and why is not your concern.”
“Yes. Your father-in-law—or do you think of him as your father?—made that quite clear in his letter. Philippe thanked me for assisting you, of course. With the head of the de Clermont family, the thanks always precede the threats. It is a refreshing change from your husband’s usual behavior.”
My eyes narrowed. “What is it that you want, Father Hubbard?”
“I suffer the presence of the de Clermonts because I must. But I am under no obligation to continue doing so if there is trouble.” Hubbard leaned toward me, his breath frosty. “And you are causing trouble. I can smell it. Taste it. Since you’ve come, the witches have been . . . difficult.”
“That’s an unfortunate coincidence,” I said, “but I’m not to blame. I’m so unschooled in the arts of magic that I can’t even crack an egg into a bowl.” Fran?oise came out of the market. I dropped Hubbard a curtsy and moved to step past him. His hand shot out and grabbed me around the wrist. I looked down at his cold fingers.
“It’s not just creatures who emit a scent, Mistress Roydon. Did you know that secrets have their own distinct odor?”
“No,” I said, drawing my wrist from his grasp.
“Witches can tell when someone lies. Wearhs can smell a secret like a hound can scent a deer. I will run your secret to ground, Mistress Roydon, no matter how you try to conceal it.”
“Are you ready, madame?” Fran?oise asked, frowning as she drew closer. Annie and Jack were with her, and when the girl spotted Hubbard, she blanched.
“Yes, Fran?oise,” I said, finally looking away from Hubbard’s uncanny, striated eyes. “Thank you for your counsel, Father Hubbard, and the information.”
“If the boy is too much for you, I would be happy to take care of him,” Hubbard murmured as I walked by. I turned and strode back to him.
“Keep your hands off what’s mine.” Our eyes locked, and this time it was Hubbard who looked away first. I returned to my huddle of vampire, witch, and human. Jack looked anxious and was now shifting from one foot to the other as if considering bolting. “Let’s go home and have some gingerbread,” I said, taking hold of his arm.