London 1582
The pale morning sun crept over the innyard, making the cobbles shine with dew, and climbed the walls of timber and wattle to the sign of the Boar’s Head, where it glinted on the beast’s newly painted gold tusks. A thrush nesting atop the sign hopped to the ledge of a nearby window and began to sing. Below, a cloaked figure scurried through the patch of sunlight and disappeared around the corner of the inn.
Light streamed into a gabled room on the third story where Meg de Galle lay flat on her bed, the crown of her head pressed against the wall. Her gold curls tumbled around her face like the bloom of a flower. Her arms were bent and her hands, two folded leaves, rested on her stomach. Her body under her shift was slim and straight as a stem. Two graceful, long-toed feet rested flat against a heavy chest at the end of her bed.
Meg awoke to the song of the thrush but lay abed with her eyes closed, wishing for a few more moments of sleep. She heard heavy footsteps, the scrape of her door, and the voice of her mistress.
“How can you sleep like that? You look like the duchess on her tomb,” said Gwin Overby, coming into her chamber.
Meg knew what Gwin meant, having seen tombs with stone effigies lining the nave of St. Paul’s when she helped Davy and Peter filch purses there. Now her daily companion was a honest alewife, and true to her word, she had stolen not so much as a farthing since hooking the clothes from the bawdy house two years earlier.
“I’m not asleep,” said Meg.
“How can a body rest in peace on a stone slab with people going by at all hours?” Gwin’s words whistled through the gaps in her front teeth, which jutted forward as if they wanted to escape from her mouth. Some customers mockingly called her Mistress Over-byte.
“I believe the duchess rests quite well, being dead,” said Meg. She sat up and rubbed the top of her head, which was sore from being pressed against the wall. “Will you measure me today?” She handed Gwin a piece of chalk and stood with her back to the door.
Gwin bunched up her skirt and with Meg’s help climbed onto a stool.
“Don’t slouch, bean blossom,” she said, reaching over Meg’s head. The chalk scraped on the wood.
Meg turned around and saw the new mark on the door—a finger’s width above last month’s. “It’s not working,” she said, glaring at the chest at the foot of the bed.
“You’re fifteen and almost done growing,” said Gwin hopefully.
Meg sat down on the bed and regarded her long legs with their sharp knees and long, narrow feet. They looked like her father’s legs. Her long, sinewy arms were the same as her mother’s. They had bequeathed her not a penny, but all their height and strength combined.
“It’s bad enough being called Long Meg,” she said. “But must they stare at me with mouths agape and slap their heads?”
“Don’t mind them,” said Gwin. “Somewhere is a good man who likes a woman who can reach the top shelf on her own.”
“But would he would marry a girl whose lips are so high above his?” said Meg mournfully.
“There are worse fates than not being married,” said Gwin.
Meg thought of her parents. It was not marriage itself but misfortune that had made them miserable. She did not tell Gwin that her father had died in prison and her mother had killed a priest and drowned herself. These were secrets she meant never to reveal. Nor would she ever speak of Davy and Peter, though some days she missed her old companions, missed the freedom of being Mack. Secure as she was under Gwin’s wing, she longed for the excitement—yes, even the danger—of her old life.
“Get dressed and break your fast,” Gwin said, passing through the doorway sideways because of her wide hips. She fed herself as generously as she did Meg, having a special fondness for butter and cakes.
Meg sat on her bed brooding. She had wanted to become a new person when she came to the Boar’s Head, but her body had its own ideas of what that meant. Her limbs were long, her breasts like flatcakes, her hips narrow as a lath. She reached down to draw on her shoes—an old pair of the master’s that had been chewed by Bandog, the mastiff—and noticed there were hairs growing on her big toes. Was I meant to be a man? Did Nature err in making me?
A new idea occurred to her. Taking an old piece of linen and a needle and thread, she sewed along the inner seam of her shift, making two large pockets.
In the kitchen below pots clanged, Master Overby shouted, and Piebald the cat yowled as if he were being skinned alive. Gwin called, “Be quick, Meg!”
“I come anon!” Meg laced up her bodice and stepped into her skirt. She took the stones she used to warm her bed, each one the size of her fist, and put them in her pockets, noting with satisfaction how they weighed her down.
“This must keep me from getting any taller,” she murmured. She picked up the chamber pot and descended the stairs with care, pushed open the back door, and tossed the slops into the ditch between the inn and the mews.
“Watch it, Long Meg!” shouted the chamberlain, jumping to avoid the yellow liquid and dropping a pair of boots into the mire. “Beshrew you, wench!”
He was a surly fellow, Meg thought. “Fie upon you too, Job Nockney!”
Neither of them saw the cloaked figure in the shadows where the ivy grew upon the walls.
A growling Job Nockney picked up the boots and crossed the courtyard with his curious flat-footed gait. He looked up at the sign and frowned at the white smears on the boar’s visage. “Dab, come hither!”
Job’s son emerged from the stable scratching his flea bites. His hair, mixed with straw, stood on end.
Job thrust his finger upward. “I just painted that sign,” he said.
Dab picked up a small stone, fitted it into his slingshot, and let it fly. The nest fell to the ground.
“You’re a wicked boy, Dab!” Meg cried, running over to pick up the nest. She carried it inside and left in on the hearth, meaning to place it safely under the eaves after she finished her work. The thrush sang on, unaware that her home was lost.
Unseen, the cloaked figure had inserted a foot in the back door before it closed.
The inn had few guests besides the gentleman waiting for Job to clean his boots. Come September it would be teeming with travelers arriving for the annual Southwark Fair. They would sleep two or three to a bed and crowd into the public rooms to play at dice, drink, sing rowdy songs, and tease Meg, saying “How far up do those legs go?”
Master Overby and Gwin sat at a table in the public room, chewing cold venison and calculating their likely gains from the fair.
“We’ll charge four pence for bed and board, two for a bed only—a fair price, considering the demand there will be for lodging,” Master Overby said, jotting down numbers. “A penny to see the play and two for a seat in the gallery—”
“A shilling for a quart of canary wine; in drink will be our greatest profit,” said Gwin.
“Two for a seat in the gallery!” Master Overby repeated, raising his voice. He did not like to be interrupted.
Meg shooed Piebald away with her broom. The cat jumped onto the table and meowed, nosing the greasy platter from which Gwin had eaten every bite.
“For entertainment I’ll hire Sir Andrew d’Arke. That great swill-belly shakes the stage with his ranting, which pleases the—”
“And he is content to be paid with sack,” said Gwin.
“Which pleases the audience!” shouted Master Overby.
Meg winced and looked away in time to see a figure cross the doorway.
“Are you looking for your boots, sir?” she asked, but got no reply.
Was the fellow deaf? Or was he a thief? Broom in hand she went after him. No one would sneak past her into the Boar’s Head!
The sun had not yet lighted the dim hallway, but Meg could hear someone at the top of the stairs. She took the steps two at time and saw the hem of a cloak disappear into a far room.
“Who goes there?” she demanded, stepping into the room with her broom raised. No one was visible. The back of Meg’s neck began to tingle. Gwin liked to tell of a merchant who had been murdered in his bed and whose ghost still haunted the inn. The door creaked on its hinges and fell shut behind her. She whirled around. Whoever had fled from her stood pressed against the wall. Meg stifled a scream as a pale hand emerged from the cloak and pushed back the hood. And she beheld not the transparent visage of a ghost, but the face of a living, breathing girl like herself.
Only much shorter.