CHAPTER II
By the time they reached Botolph’s Wharf, the Hayreddin was riding at anchor, her sails reefed against a stiff breeze blowing up the Thames. Hailing the captain, Mal jogged up the gangplank with more enthusiasm than he had ever boarded a vessel in his life.
“Catlyn!” Youssef embraced him, then stepped back to hold him at arm’s length. “You look pale. These northern climes do not suit you, I think.”
“You look as hale as ever, you old rogue,” Mal replied. “Well, there might be one or two more grey hairs in your beard, but it’s hard to be certain among so many.”
Youssef gave him a friendly buffet on the arm.
“I could say the same of you, friend.” He glanced at Sandy. “I suppose you gentlemen want to see your family?”
Not waiting for an answer, Youssef led them down to the tiny cabin where Mal and Ned had once stayed on the journey to Venice. The Moor inclined his head in silent invitation. Mal reached out a shaking hand and opened the door. Immediately his eyes lit upon the one face he had been seeking: his wife, Coby. Her expression brightened and she leapt to her feet, slipping into Mal’s arms like a hand into a glove. He pressed his cheek against her headdress, wishing he could bury his face in her pale hair that always smelt of chamomile and woodsmoke, but it did not do for a married woman to go bareheaded, especially on a ship full of men.
Sandy pushed past them with scarcely a word of apology.
“Where is my amayi?”
Susanna, their Venetian nursemaid, curtsied and gestured to a sea chest that had been turned into a makeshift cot. Kit lay sprawled on a blanket, thumb in his mouth, dark lashes fluttering as he slept. Mal smiled down at him for a moment. Strange how like Sandy and himself the boy looked, despite not being of their blood. Kiiren had chosen well.
“We’ll take a wherry over to Southwark,” he said, “and stay at Ned’s–”
“No.” Coby twisted in his arms and looked towards Sandy, who had scooped up the sleeping child and was cradling him as tenderly as any mother. “We should go straight to Rushdale Hall. Tonight.”
“What’s the matter?” He cupped her chin in one hand and gazed into her sea-grey eyes, resisting the temptation to probe her thoughts. He was not his brother.
“I don’t want anyone to see Kit. Not yet.”
He drew her out into the passageway and closed the door behind them.
“Is there something wrong with the boy?” he asked in a low voice.
“No, nothing. But we don’t want the guisers to guess he’s–” she looked around, as if suspecting spies even here “–who he is, do we?”
“I suppose not.”
“So it’s best they believe he was born in Provence, after we were married, and not in Venice.”
“I still don’t understand. How would they know?”
She sighed. “If he was born in France, he would be scarcely a year and a half old now, not nearly two.”
“So?”
“So a child of his age grows quickly. Someone might notice that he’s very forward for his supposed age, and put two and two together.”
“Oh.”
“In a year or so, a few months here or there won’t matter so much. But right now…” She shrugged.
“You think of everything, don’t you?”
“Someone has to.”
“And what about Susanna?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do we have a Venetian nursemaid, if he was born in France?”
Coby stared up at him, crestfallen. “I didn’t think of that.”
“No matter, my love.” He kissed her brow. “Where we are going, they scarce know a Frenchman from a Turk.”
He ushered her back into the cabin.
“Sandy, wait here with the womenfolk. I’ll be back before curfew with a coach and our luggage.”
He snapped a bow to the ladies and made his way back to the quayside. Perhaps he could hire a coach at the livery stables where they had left their horses, though he would still have to go back to Southwark to get his and Sandy’s belongings. He set off up the street, eyes flicking from one passerby to the next. Any of these people could be a guiser spy, but what could they report back? That he and his brother had met a ship out of Marseille? Perhaps with a few well-placed lies, their enemies could be fooled into thinking they were leaving for France…
“Evening,” a voice growled from the shadows of a nearby alley. Its owner stepped out into the street: a nondescript man of middling years in the rough jerkin and hose of a labourer.
“Baines. What are you doing here?”
“Our esteemed employer sent me to deliver a message as soon as she heard you was back in London. I wondered what you was up to, visiting your heathen friends, so I followed.”
“You were spying on me.”
The intelligencer grinned unpleasantly. “Just doing my job.”
“So, you’re here now. What’s the message?”
“You’re to join her for supper on Thursday night. At the house in Seething Lane.”
Mal cursed under his breath. It was a good week’s travel to his estate in Derbyshire, which meant he would have to send Coby on ahead of him with only Sandy for protection. Still, with their main target still in London, perhaps the guisers would leave his family alone.
“Very well. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be about my own business. Alone.”
Baines gave him a mocking bow and disappeared back into the shadows. Mal headed for the livery stable, his former good humour souring like milk in a dairymaid’s bucket.