It’s deathly quiet inside the cathedral. Her footfall echoes from the stone floor to the intricate vaulted ceiling. She walks down the long aisle, lined on either side by stone arches filled with shadows, drawn to the circular window at the end. It shimmers in the cool, silvery light of the moon, vibrant and delicate and alive, a blooming summer flower made from tiny pieces of brightly colored glass. She can’t fathom how something so beautiful can exist in such an ugly world.
Beatrix lies down on a bench tucked into an alcove and stares up at the window, too tired to sleep. Her thoughts were easier to ignore when she was moving, concentrating only on getting to the next village, focused on making it to London, where no one would know her or care about her or even notice her. She put one foot in front of the other until she was crossing the Thames, but now she has lost her momentum, her will to keep moving forward gone.
She’s here. She has made it to London, all on her own. Now what is she supposed to do?
Her heart sinks into her hollow stomach. There is only one thing she can do.
Live.
June 15, 1605London, England
Long shadows are creeping in at the corners of the market by the time Beatrix and Oliver finish their meal. Beatrix feels like she might burst. She returns their mugs to the brewster while Oliver takes the bucket to the oystermen. She’s eaten her meal—more than sixpence worth—and has no reason to linger. She doesn’t say goodbye.
A heaviness settles in her chest, grows with every step away from the market, tugging her back. A foreign, forgotten sensation. She glances over her shoulder.
Oliver navigates his way along the crowded street. He stops next to a row of towering houses, trying to get his bearings. A man runs into him, and a woman curses them both as she narrowly misses the collision. Oliver steps out of their path.
Beatrix shakes her head. He’ll be robbed blind—or worse—by the end of the day at this rate. Not that it’s her problem.
Movement in a window three stories above Oliver catches Beatrix’s eye. A woman pokes her head out, then disappears. She reappears a moment later, bucket in hand.
“Oliver!” Beatrix shouts. He’s too far away to hear her.
She runs for him, ignoring the cries of the people she knocks as she pushes through the bustling street. He looks up at the commotion, those bright eyes meeting hers a moment before her body collides with his. He stumbles backward, and Beatrix’s momentum sends her careening past him. He throws out his arm and catches her around the waist, pulls her into him before she can crash headlong onto the cobblestones.
A bucketful of refuse splashes into the lane where Oliver was standing moments ago. He steps back, pulling Beatrix with him, and pales asthe realization of what he narrowly escaped washes over him with the stench.
Beatrix steps away, and his hand falls from her waist. “A little free advice,” she says, catching her breath. “When you’re in London, keep your head up and your feet moving. And for Christ’s sake, stay out of the gutter.”
“Thanks,” Oliver says sheepishly. He runs a hand through his disheveled mop of curls. “Maybe this was a mistake.” The anguish in his eyes is fleeting, a dark cloud blotting out the sun for a single moment before clearing.
“London just takes some getting used to, that’s all,” Beatrix offers. She shouldn’t care. The feeling unsettles her. She shoves it away.
Oliver sighs. “Right.”
Beatrix recognizes his defeated tone: the voice of someone trying—failing—to prove something. “I could help you. Show you around the city and make sure you don’t get covered in shit,” she says with a wry grin. “For a crown,” she adds, before her offer can be mistaken for charity.
“A crown?”
She might as well be robbing him at that price.
“But you left the market,” he says. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Not for a crown, I don’t.” She has nowhere to be without the crown, either, but he doesn’t need to know that.
He considers her for a long moment. “All right, deal.”
It sends a pang of guilt ringing through her chest. She shoves that away, too.
“So, where to next?”
She tries to see London through Oliver’s eyes, the way she might have seen it if she had crossed London Bridge under different circumstances. Beatrix from little Lancaut would never have imagined a place like London could be real, with palaces and cathedrals taller than the trees in the forest, a bridge so wide entire houses fit on both sides, and more people in the streets than she thought existed in all of England. If that Beatrix had seen London, somehow, she would have wanted to see more. She would have wanted to see it all.
She smiles at Oliver. “Follow me.”
They head west along the Thames, walk the length of the river from the Tower of London up to Ludgate. Oliver is more taken with the jostling crowd filtering through the old stone gate than the imposing fortress, and she almost loses him in the throng of people more than once. They stroll past St. Paul’s and through the bustling produce markets of West Cheap, both feeling too full to buy anything. They eavesdrop on the ship captains persuading bankers to purchase their exotic cargoes at the Royal Exchange and admire the Roman wall. As the sun nears setting, they head back to the bridge.
Beatrix leans against the rail, the cool of the stone bleeding through her dress as she watches a fishing boat disappear beneath her feet. Oliver leans next to her. His arm brushes against hers.
