The quiet of London’s Soper Lane on a mid-October evening in the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and eighty-three was shattered by the sound of raised voices. They came from an upper room in a tall, handsome building, the house of a mercer who sold velvets, satins, and damasks from his shop on the ground floor.
‘I will not go through with the wedding!’ Godlina Walkenden shrieked at her sister’s husband. ‘You cannot force me into the church or into his bed!’
‘Lower your voice!’ Hugo Hackett bellowed in return. ‘Do you want the entire neighborhood to hear you?’
Although heated from the start, their quarrel had not begun with shouting. It had built in volume as tempers rose until Lina no longer cared if the whole world knew that Hugo had schemed to marry her to a monster.
‘You knew all along that Alessandro Portinari was steeped in vice!’
Growling like a baited bear, Hugo sent her a look that promised retribution, but at the same time he took a step away from her. His nostrils flared as he drew in deep breaths to calm himself. The fury in his narrowed eyes would have frightened Lina had she not felt so certain that he would never dare beat her. To do so might damage her value as trade goods.
Hugo managed to lower his voice, but there was no less venom behind his words. ‘Who told you these things?’ he demanded. ‘What wicked person put such notions into your head?’
‘Someone who thought I should be warned of my danger.’
‘If you mean that young jackanapes, Portinari’s nephew, he—’
‘I do not!’ The hectic color in Hugo’s face made Lina fear for Tommaso’s safety. In haste, she blurted out the truth. ‘It was Goody Kendall.’
This revelation further inflamed Hugo’s anger. His hands clenched into fists. ‘That mad old woman? What can she know? How can she say anything to Portinari’s detriment?’
‘She is his near neighbor in Lime Street and she has eyes in her head.’ And servants who fraternized with those who worked for the rich, elderly Italian silk merchant Hugo had picked to be Lina’s husband.
‘Even if what she told you is true, what does it matter? This is a good match. You will reap many benefits.’
‘As will you. I will not go through with the wedding,’ Lina repeated, this time with less heat but just as much conviction. What did it matter that Hugo controlled her marriage portion? She would sooner starve than couple with that foul old man.
‘You will do as you are told.’ Hugo’s voice had gone ice cold. ‘If you do not, I will lock you up without food or water until you are more amenable.’
She yelped when he seized her by the upper arm. His grip tightened painfully as he hauled her up the stairs. Her howls of outrage rose in pitch, but she was powerless against his greater strength. He shoved her into her bedchamber with such force that she fell to her knees.
By the time Lina scrambled to her feet, she was locked in. She beat on the solid wooden door until her fists were bruised and swollen but to no avail. At length, she flung herself onto her bed and wept, spending half the night in tears. Only when there were no more left to fall and she was too exhausted to feel either rage or despair did the glimmer of an idea pierce her muddled thoughts.
She lay still, pondering the risks. Then she considered the alternatives and came to a decision. When she had secreted the few pieces of jewelry she owned on her person, she tied the bed sheets together to make a rope and escaped through her window.
The moment her feet touched the ground, her nerve failed. It was dark and cold in the garden behind the house. An unpleasant smell drifted toward her from the kennel where garbage was tossed. A rustle in the shrubbery reminded her that rats were everywhere in London, even wealthy neighborhoods an arrow’s shot from Goldsmith’s Row.
The idea of stepping out into the street terrified her. How did she think she could survive alone in the city? She’d had some vague notion of pawning the brooches and pendants and rings but whatever money she received from such a sale would not last long. She would need help to survive.
She thought of Tommaso, but he was Alessandro Portinari’s nephew and lived in his uncle’s house. That was the first place Hugo would look for her. And if Alessandro caught her there—
Shuddering, she shied away from what that would mean.
She could not go to any of her acquaintances in the city, either, not that she had many. Her half sister, Isolde, knew them all and would be as determined as her husband to find Lina and force her to go through with the marriage he had arranged. Isolde always did what Hugo wanted. The wishes of a much younger sibling mattered not at all.
Rosamond, Lina thought. She could ask Rosamond for help. She would know what to do. Rosamond always knew what to do. Sometimes it was the wrong thing, but she was never at a loss when it came to making plans.
Lina wondered what Rosamond would do if she were the one standing alone in a dark garden at the back of a London mercery? Rosamond would go back inside, Lina decided, not to surrender to Hugo’s plans for her but to better prepare herself for an escape from the city.
The lock on the garden door yielded to the pin on the back of one of Lina’s brooches, a trick Rosamond had taught her when they were no more than thirteen. Moving silently through the dark house, Lina found her way back to her own bedchamber door. Since Hugo had not bothered to take away the key, she had no trouble gaining entry.
Once inside the room, by the light of the candle she had left burning when she fled, Lina added a second layer of clothing to what she already wore and tossed her warmest cloak over the whole. She had been shivering in the garden for want of one. Then it was down to the larder to stuff bread and cheese into a cloth bag.
It was the middle of the night and no one else was stirring. Hugo and Isolde, Hugo’s apprentices, and the servants were all asleep in their beds. The girls Isolde was training to be silkwomen, all but Lina herself, went home to their parents at night. Lina hesitated, then turned her steps in the direction of the chamber above the kitchen that Hugo used as his counting house.
Greatly daring, she intended to help herself to whatever was in the cash box. She told herself it would not be stealing. She was reclaiming what was rightfully hers. Besides, she would be long gone before anyone discovered that both she and the money were missing.
She stepped over the threshold, candle held high … and froze. The room was not empty, as she had expected it to be. In the flickering light of her candle, the only illumination in the chamber, she recognized her brother-in-law seated at his writing table. He appeared to have fallen asleep over his ledgers.
Then she saw the knife and the blood.
Her screams woke the rest of the household.