At the edge of the great market that packed the yard before St. Paul’s Cathedral, we parted ways with the family. Mud squelched under my boots as I gaped up at the famous church. In this time it wasn’t yet Christopher Wren’s elegant, domed marvel I’d seen in so many photos. That wouldn’t be built for hundreds of years. Still, the cathedral’s high stone walls and square Norman towers were imposing.
Hundreds of tents and ramshackle booths crammed the vast area before the front entrance. People clogged the straw-strewn, muddy aisles, wrapped to the eyeballs in dark cloaks and nubby scarves. Somewhere, a hammer banged rhythmically on steel. Voices and laughter carried across the space as men tipped horn flasks to their lips and warmed their hands over fires set in iron barrels. Women haggled with vendors. Everywhere people had gathered into loose circles to watch the dozens of performers. Acrobats flipped a woman into the air. A monkey crept into the crowd to steal a farmer’s hat. A dwarf offered odds on any newcomer who’d chance wrestling with his burly partner.
It was overwhelming and deafening. The most disgusting, the most beautiful, sight I’d ever seen.
“Wow,” I breathed, trying to look everywhere at once. “I mean . . . wow.”
Collum’s lips twitched as he and Phoebe exchanged a grin. “Aye,” he said. “I know.”
I jerked as something damp and wooly brushed against my fingers. Glancing down, I saw a dingy sheep nibbling at my cloak. The smell of moldy, wet blankets floated in a cloud around us as a young boy smacked the animal with his crooked staff. It ambled on, unconcerned, joined by a dozen bleating cousins.
“It’s like a flea market,” I said in wonder, “except instead of tube socks and cheesy artwork, they’re selling armor and live sheep.”
Phoebe’s eyes flicked from one ramshackle booth to the next. “Ohhh, would you look at all this stuff.”
“Oh no.” Collum snatched the back of Phoebe’s cloak as she darted away. “I know that look. Don’t even think about it. We’re going straight to Mabray House.
Lucinda, Mac, and Moira’s previous, unsuccessful trip to London a few months earlier had provided us a place to stay, a rented house, not far from the square. And Moira had tracked down the merchant who’d brokered the deal for the tapestry. For a few coppers, he’d given up the nobleman’s name. Unfortunately, the merchant told them, the baron lived far out in the country, nearly to Wales. They’d had no time to get there before the Dim came to take them home.
My mother had last been seen at the massive Baynard’s Castle, near the Thames. Historically, Baynards—a private residence of that noble family—was the most elegant castle in London, shadowing even the Tower and Westminster Palace, which had stabled horses and barracked soldiers during the recent civil war. Research claimed Henry and Eleanor had taken it over upon their arrival, gathering their nobility there, while the royal palace of Westminster was made livable again.
Yet the man who’d commissioned the tapestry was named Babcock. Not a member of the wealthy Baynard family at all, as far as we could tell.
Why some stranger would commission a tapestry of my mother in the first place, we didn’t know. But with the king and queen’s arrival, it was a good bet he’d be back for the coronation. No nobleman would take the chance of snubbing his new monarch.
The big problem was getting inside. Our first choice, posing as the children of a wealthy merchant, held less risk but might open fewer doors. The backup plan involved forged papers that proved we were the children of a minor lord from the far north of England. Moira’s intensive research had located a real baron who did indeed have three children and was known to have been something of a hermit.
The second plan was dicey, though. If the nobleman had decided he’d better head down to London to meet the king, or if one of his neighbors knew him or his children by sight, we could end up in a crap-storm of trouble.
“So this house Mac rented . . . ?” I squinted at the rows of two-story wattle-and-daub structures that lined the narrow streets. Each lane twisted and crooked off with little sense of direction. “Do you know where it’s located, exactly?”
Collum ignored me as he squinted at one path after another.
“I know we couldn’t bring the map,” I pressed. “But if you’re having trouble, I got a glimpse of it, and—”
“I’ll find it.”
Phoebe grunted. “Coll, you should listen to Hope. She’s got a bloody photographic memory . . . Hello. Then we wouldn’t have to spend half the day searching.”
“Don’t say ‘bloody,’” Collum said distractedly. “It’s not yet in use. And I said I’d find the house, so quit gawking at me. Belongs to some Finnish merchant who rents it out by the year. Comes with a couple of servants to maintain the upkeep too.” He set off into the market. “Let’s go. We need to get settled. Seventy-two hours, then we have to be back at the clearing. Sunrise on the third day.” He glanced up at the smoggy sky. “And this one’s half done over.”