by Annie Dalton
“You do not love me,” he complained.
She gave a scornful laugh. “Rosalind may drop at your feet like a dead pigeon the instant you fire a poem at her! I have more sense.” Flouncing her skirts, she bustled off to fetch their ale.
Nick grinned. “I’ll have to tame that little wildcat in a year or so.”
His friend didn’t answer. He had an oddly misty expression. Actually, I started to wonder if maybe he wasn’t quite all there.
“It’s so weird that they’re friends,’ I said to the others. “Why didn’t the Agency say so in the first place?”
A grubby white puppy appeared from somewhere. It made an immediate beeline for Reuben, collapsing beside him in a sprawl of gangly paws, looking up adoringly. Animals love pure angels. In fact, hanging out with Reuben is sometimes a lot like hanging out with Doctor Dolittle.
Cat sneaked two huge helpings of stew to her mates while her aunt wasn’t looking. “Here’s some bread to mop up the gravy,” she whispered.
“Stay, Cat,” Nick coaxed her. “You’re looking so pretty today.”
Chance started eating ravenously. “Yes, stay, Cat,” he mumbled. “Nick’s got a proposition for you.”
Cat’s eyes narrowed. “Another one?”
Nick acted hurt. “This will make us rich.”
“Don’t tell me,” she scoffed. “With his dying breath, an old alchemist gave you the recipe for turning lead into gold. But you’re prepared to share it with me, in return for some more stew.”
Nick clutched his chest, as if she’d just stabbed him through the heart. “So young, yet so cruel!”
Cat grinned. “I’m young, but I didn’t just fall out of the nest,” she called, as she flew off to serve new customers.
I quickly gave my mates the lowdown on Cat’s unusual family history.
“Nick’s amazing too,” said Lola loyally. “He knows Greek and Latin, plus he plays the lute. And he writes poetry.”
“And what a dish,” I sighed.
Reuben was tickling the puppy’s tummy. To the customers, of course, it looked as if it was just rolling around on the ground in sheer puppy high spirits!
“What’s your boy called again?” I asked politely.
He gave a deep sigh. “Chance.”
“That’s a funny name.”
“No comment,” Reuben said darkly.
Chance had really perked up now he’d eaten. Only unfortunately, he’d gone to the other extreme. When Cat joined them, he started on some involved story about how his landlord just slung him out for no reason. I’ve got to admit, Chance had quite a knack for storytelling. He seemed to know how to make completely ordinary things sound incredibly dramatic. But it was like no-one could get a word in!
Cat was sweet, though. “Don’t worry. We won’t let you sleep on the street.”
His eyes lit up. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been homeless!” he said eagerly. “Did I tell you about when I came to London? It was the middle of winter. Snow was falling—”
“I thought you arrived in May,” she objected.
“So I did,” he said promptly. “There was an unusually late fall of snow that year. One night, I woke up in a doorway, half-dead with cold, and found myself covered in a thin layer of white, like a poor man’s shroud—”
Reuben rolled his eyes. I felt sorry for him. Me and Lola both had v. cool humans to take care of. Chance was just really sad!
Unfortunately, Lola picked that moment to put the boot in. “I’ve got this funny feeling that Nick might be really famous when he grows up,’ she bragged.
Reuben shuddered. “Famous? Him? After what he was saying about cock fights, on the way here?”
Lola scowled. “Animal rights haven’t been invented yet, you idiot. They don’t know any better.”
Suddenly I noticed several men moving stealthily towards the Frenchman’s table.
“Erm,” I said uneasily, “I’m getting a really bad vibe.”
Suddenly someone shrieked, “The traitor has a knife!”
Next minute total chaos broke out.
Chapter Four
The Frenchman’s chair was pulled from under him, sending him sprawling. Then the table went over. Ink and leftover stew flew everywhere. Someone bellowed, “Stand up, you Spanish dog! Fight like a man!” And someone else yanked the Frenchman to his feet.
“The knife was only to sharpen my quill, monsieurs,” he stammered.
But the men started shoving him around, trying to make him fight.
Naturally, we were doing our best to transmit helpful vibes, but it took some concentration, believe me. Luckily Cat’s uncle came charging up from his cellar and calmed things down. And after a LOT of extremely unpleasant name-calling, the Frenchman was allowed to leave unharmed.
Lola was horrified. “Will someone tell me what’s so wrong with Spain?” she demanded.
It so happened that the Tudors were about the only thing I’d liked about history lessons at my old school. I think it was that irresistible combination of blood, gore and fashion! So I was able to give my mates a speedy history lesson. “The Spanish wanted a Protestant to rule England. Sorry, I mean a Catholic,” I added hastily. “That’s right, they definitely wanted Queen Elizabeth to turn Catholic so she could marry their king. But she said, ‘No way, Jose,’ so they plotted to get rid of her.”
Reuben was shocked. “You mean like, kill her?”
“They tried everything!” I said knowledgeably. “Poisoned dresses, hired assassins.”
“Poisoned dresses!” Lola was impressed.
“One time they sent warships to invade England,” I told them. “But the English beat them off.” I did a hasty calculation. “Oh, hang on. Maybe the Spanish Armada hasn’t happened yet…Oh, I don’t know! Anyway, I’m telling you, this Spanish thing dragged on for like, decades.”
Reuben looked confused. “Mel, the guy wasn’t even Spanish.”
Lola gave him a grim little smile. “He was foreign, wasn’t he?”
I could tell the incident had put her totally on edge. Michael warned us it would be like this, I thought. Elizabethans are SO intense. One minute everyone’s having a mellow time, then suddenly, total mayhem!
I think the bad vibes got to Chance too. Because with absolutely no warning, he jumped up and started doing acrobatics. Back-flips, cartwheels, walking on his hands.
“What on earth?” said Reuben.
Everyone was staring open-mouthed. No-one knew what to make of this lunatic.
Once he’d got everyone’s attention, Chance somersaulted across the tavern at electrifying speed. Then, like a character in a musical, he jumped on a chair and started to sing. An extremely rude song to judge from the actions!
By the time he reached the last verse, the customers were laughing so much, they could hardly stand!
“Where did you learn tumbling?” Cat hissed as he took his bow.
“Oh, the gypsies taught me,” he mumbled.
Nick came bounding over to join him. After a bit of conferring, the boys launched into a drinking song. Nick had a wonderful voice, heaps better than Chance’s. When they’d finished, Chance left Nick to charm the punters with a truly beautiful ballad.
Afterwards, everyone bought them drinks, and before long everyone was getting happily smashed.
Lola was full of admiration. “Chance totally changed the atmosphere! That was pure genius!”
“Pure adrenaline, you mean,” Reuben scoffed. “It’s like he had to do something, even if it meant making a total spectacle of himself. Have you noticed how tense he is? That kid is hiding something.”
I privately agreed with him. Something about Chance just didn’t add up.
During the singsong, I’d noticed three girls chatting to Cat. What with their lurid make-up and worldly-wise expressions, it didn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out how they earned their living. After a bit of arguing, they called Chance over.
“Cat says you need a place to sta
y,” said a girl with a mole on her cheek. “We’ve got a cubbyhole you could use, haven’t we, Nell?”
“Tell us about yourself, darling,” suggested Nell with a warm smile.
“Oh, please don’t,” Reuben groaned.
But Chance was off like a wind-up rabbit, telling them how his family had fallen on hard times. Desperate to help out, he’d gone out one night to poach the squire’s deer, and got caught. Luckily a mate helped him to escape from the local lock-up. “There was nothing to do but come to London and seek my fortune. It was the month of May, but instead of blossom, snow was falling. One night I woke up in a doorway, half-dead with cold -”
“All together now,” Lola giggled.
“- and found myself covered in a thin layer of white, like a poor man’s shroud,” we chorused.
But by the time Chance had finished his ridiculous yarn, the girls had agreed he could stay.
“We’ll take care of your sweetheart, Cat!” they teased her, as they got up to leave.
“We’re going to the playhouse tomorrow,” Nick reminded Chance. He pinched Cat’s cheek. “You come too.”
She glowered. “You just want me to help you with your plan.”
“I’ll call for you,” Nick insisted.
Reuben followed Chance and his new landladies into the night.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” I called, as my soul-mate skipped off with dishy Nick.
After the last customers had stumbled home, Cat took a candle-stump and climbed up to her little attic.
I’d have fallen straight into bed, personally. But she patiently peeled off layer after layer, including a rib-crushing corset (a corset!), until she was only wearing her petticoat.
She washed herself thoroughly with squishy-looking home-made soap then said her prayers. At the end she gabbled quickly, “Please bring my father safely home,” which I presumed meant she’d forgiven him. Then Cat climbed into bed, snuffed out her candle, tucked her hand under her cheek, and instantly fell asleep.
Watching humans sleep is really touching. Their daytime disguises just fall away, and you see right into their souls.
Cat’s dreams bore absolutely no resemblance to her daytime life. They were filled with crying gulls and the snap and billow of sails. And when she strained her eyes, she could see the shore, a blue shadow on the horizon.
But then the sun came up over the rooftops and birds began twittering outside her window. It was time for Cat to start another day.
Nick turned up shortly after ten. “Omigosh,” I sighed. “He’s even better looking by daylight!”
I noticed Lola behind him, pulling faces. “Hands off! This human’s mine,” she teased. Strangely, she didn’t sound quite as pleased about it as she had the day before.
Cat grudgingly consented to take Nick to Chance’s lodgings. “I have not agreed to anything. I want to see how he is, that’s all,” she said and immediately went marching off. She had brought bread and cold meal for Chance, wrapped in a cloth.
The street was dazzlingly bright after the tavern Lola and I put our shades on, and I hooked my arm through hers. “So what’s Golden Boy’s place like?”
She rolled her eyes. “Messy! You know boys!”
I thought Lola sounded just a bit too perky. I don’t know why, but I got the feeling she was keeping something from me.
I couldn’t believe how noisy London was in these times; wooden carts thundering over cobbles, bells pealing, plus all the street-sellers shouting practically non-stop.
Nick bought a red rose from a flower girl and stuck it in his cap.
Oh, what a poser! I thought. I decided it was high time gorgeous Nick was dislodged from his pedestal. I gave Lola a nudge. ” I bet the flower’s for that Rosalind bimbo.”
She gave me a hurt look. “I think it looks really good on him.”
“Ooh,” I teased. “Looks like you’re carrying a bit of a torch.”
Lola glared at me. Luckily at that moment Cat and Nick got a spurt on and we had to go galloping after them.
Cat went beetling off down a maze of alleyways, until she reached a rickety tenement built of wood and thatch. Nick caught her up at the door, and started nosing in Cat’s bundle while they waited for someone to let them in. She slapped his hand away.
“I see you have favourites, Cat,” he said huffily. “Chance gets breakfast, yet I must buy my own.”
“If you’re hungry, it’s because you squander your father’s money at cards,” she snapped. “Chance has nobody to care for him.”
“Push the door, Cat, and walk in,” called a girl’s voice.
We piled in after her into a little front room where Reuben was calmly practising martial art: knee-bends.
“You survived then,” I teased.
He grinned. “Actually, the girls are quite cool. Can you believe they’ve got him writing love letters to earn his keep!”
We quickly moved in to do a spot of angelic eavesdropping.
Chance was at the table in his shirt-sleeves scribbling away. The girls clustered around him, with awed expressions.
I couldn’t believe one of the girls was mending Chance’s double for him!
Nick pulled a sour face at Cat. “Poor Chance has nobody,” he mimicked.
Chance turned to Nell. “This is what you said. ‘Dearest Jem, I remember your sweet face as we walked by the river…’”
As she heard her words read back, Nell blushed to her ears. “Tell me how to end it,” she begged.
“As quickly as possible,” Nick suggested in a sarky voice.
Chance was trying to ignore him. “Did Jem give you that half a sixpence around your neck?”
Nell nodded, blushing.
“How about something like, ‘I wear your token night and day. It shines as brightly as when you first gave it to me.’”
“Hurry up, man,” said Nick impatiently. “We’ve got better things to do than listen to your bad poetry.”
Chance looked hurt. “It’s not supposed to be poetry. It’s a letter.”
Sympathetic Nell came to his rescue. “It’s three years since I last saw my Jem,” she said. “My letter can wait.”
The other girl bit off her thread and gave Chance his doublet back. “Farewell, Tom,” the girls called after him affectionately.
Lola and I almost banged heads in the doorway. “Farewell who?” we said simultaneously.
Cat had gone storming out. The boys had to run to catch up with her, and so did we. She kept up her cracking pace for a few minutes. Then she glared at Chance. “Why do you do that?”
He gave a baffled shrug. “What?”
“All these lies! You even lie about your name. ‘My friends call me Chance’, that’s what you said.”
“It’s true!” he blustered.
“Really! What about that man who came for you, wasn’t he looking for someone named Robert? And now you’re Tom or Dick or is it Harry?”
Chance looked completely panic-stricken. He was actually cringing, like a dazed little mole being dragged into daylight.
Nick tried to interrupt but Cat was unstoppable “You have more names than the tavern dog! Customers call him Snowball one day and Killer the next until he—”
She stopped abruptly. Desperate to shut her up Nick had whipped the rose out of his hatband, presenting it to her with a bow.
“No more of this,” he laughed. “For what’s in a name? Would not this rose smell as sweetly, if it was called turnip or herring, or - or hairy nostril!
I felt the weirdest tingle. Like I’d already heard these words, or something very like them, before. They had a similar effect on Chance, because he stopped looking like a dazzled mole, and broke into a delighted smile.
Cat was still staring at the rose. She had forgotten to close her mouth and there was the faintest flush under her golden skin.
Oh-oh, I thought. Complications! I nudged Lola. “I think my Cat fancies your Nick,” I whispered.
Reuben looked smug. “You�
��ve only just noticed haven’t you?”
“When did you notice then?” I said sullenly.
He gave me his most seraphic smile. “The first time I saw her.”
Lola suddenly whipped off her sunglasses. I was horrified to see she was crying.
“Lollie, what is it?”
She could hardly get the words out. “It’s Nick,” she wailed at last. She glowered at us through her tears. “He’s the bad guy, OK? Dumb old Lola got the doofus!”
“Hey, where did that come from?” I said, startled. “This isn’t a contest, you know.”
“I wouldn’t say he’s an out-and-out bad guy,” said Reuben comfortingly. “A bit full of himself, maybe. It’s probably hormones.”
Lola was in such a state, that she actually stamped. “It’s not his hormones. It’s his heart, you idiot! All he thinks about is getting people to do what he wants. He’s on the make, twenty-four hours a day. It’s like he can’t stop.”
She told us that after Nick left the Feathers the previous evening, he’d stopped off at various shady gambling dens, ending up at some total dive where people were forcing this poor ape to ride around on a horse.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“These half-starved bulldogs were just waiting for it to fall off! And Nick watched,” she choked.
I put my arm around her. “But that doesn’t make him a bad person, Lollie. You said yourself, animal rights haven’t been invented yet.”
“Boo, he was actually laughing. He thought was funny!” Lola hid her face in her hands. “Then we finally got back to his place, and he fell asleep and all that cruelty just melted away. And I watched him sleeping. He has such beautiful dreams,” she said earnestly. “And it’s like I saw the real him.”
I had a flash of inspiration. “You think he’s our glitch, don’t you?”
“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know,” she said wretchedly.
As we watched, Nick pushed back his hair and smiled into Cat’s eyes.
Lola’s right, I thought. It has to be him. He clever and gorgeous, but he’s just too smooth for his own good.
Reuben beamed at Lola. “This is great! We finally know what we’re doing here.”
“Yeah! Dingaling!” I did a bad impersonation of an alarm clock. “We have to wake up Golden Boy and save him from himself.”