Page 105 of Time's Fool

“Everard Brooker,” Rilda said, noticing his interest. “He was the self-appointed painter for our coven. Did most of the miniatures you see, as well as things for the children.”

“Miniatures?” Kit repeated, glancing around, for such things were rare amongst common folk.

Anyone could commission a painting, from whatever jobber they could find, and many did so. Kit had seen come very dubious looking representations hanging in places of honor in the houses of newly wealthy merchants, or those of yeoman farmers with more land than most and pretentions of grandeur. When young and stupid, and newly into money after he’d started serving the queen, he’d even commissioned one himself—and lived to regret it.

But miniatures were a very different thing.

They had been the purview of the royal court in the queen’s father’s time, when they first became popular. And mostly still were. Levinia Teerlink, miniaturist to Henry VIII, Mary I and the current queen, had been paid forty pounds a year to provide the court with miniatures—more than Hans Holbein, the artist responsible for many of Henry VIII’s great portraits.

Miniature artists, like Nicholas Hilliard, the queen’s current official miniaturist, considered themselves gentlemen and Hilliard famously wore expensive silk whenever he painted, so as not to allow fibers to escape his clothing and ruin the tiny works of art. His creations were encased in jeweled frames and worn like jewels themselves at times, although most were kept private. A keepsake of a loved one far away, perhaps.

But now that Kit looked, they were everywhere in this otherwise humble abode.

“Mostly self-taught,” Rilda said, as Kit followed the shelves around the room, marveling at the skill displayed. “Although he did spend a year in Italy once. He always said the best miniaturists came from England, though, and it’s difficult to deny that when you see his work.”

“Very difficult,” Kit said.

The tiny images, most only a few inches high, were paired with a multitude of odd items. Alone, these would have seemed a mere hodge podge, but with the images alongside, they told a story about the owners. Like the one of a rough looking man with a scar on his chin that mowed a swath through his beard, which had been paired with an old leather tankard, still darkened in places where oily fingers had once gripped it.

“Tom Langley, Old Tom as we called him,” Rilda said. “Could drink a dozen men under the table and walk away with nary a stagger in his step.”

“And this one?” Kit indicated a miniature portrait of a young woman with a baby. Beside it on the shelf was a rattle of the type used to keep track of toddler-aged children, whilst giving them something to do. It had brass bells to make noise with, surrounding a piece of bone for chewing, and a pewter handle perfectly sized for a child’s fist.

“Mary Marney, with one of her six children. Our kind struggles with fertility, but Mary was the rare exception. Always with child, she was . . .”

Kit didn’t have Mircea’s facility with people, but one look at the old woman’s face as she trailed off and even he realized that he’d stepped in it. These weren’t keepsakes, as he’d first thought; they were parts of a shrine. To the coven she’d lost, the family she’d had, and had no more.

“They’re . . . lovely,” Kit said, wishing that he would one day learn to keep his mouth shut.

“Yes. They were.”

Kit didn’t think she was referring to the quality of the portraits.

He and Gillian sat quietly at chairs around the table whilst Rilda busied herself, preparing her strange concoction. Kit didn’t like the look of the dried, green, herb-like substance that she put into a small linen cloth, or the fact that spelled water, to make it hot, was poured over it and thence into a pot. The sickly, greenish brew that resulted was equally unappealing.

But he drank it anyway, accepting a cup with as much grace as possible, since he was here on sufferance. As did Gillian, who seemed to find it more interesting than he did. She poked her nose in her cup and breathed deeply.

“It has a wonderful aroma. Where did you get this?” she asked Rilda, who joined them with a mug of her own.

It was a simple glazed earthenware thing, although she surely could have afforded better. A clever witch always had ways of making money, although perhaps these days it was best to keep one’s head down. Or perhaps she did not wish to lord it over the people she helped.

Either way, there was nothing pretentious about the cup, or about the room, with the only luxuries being the glass in the window, a brightly colored carpet draped over a chest, and a candle in a dented pewter holder. And the multitude of portraits, staring at him like ghosts from all angles. Kit found them unnerving, and hoped this was going to be a short visit.

The old woman lit the candle as daylight faded out, leaving the room bathed in a soft, golden glow. The corners disappeared into shadow, which helped him ignore the watching throng. And while the music from downstairs was muffled here, it was easily discernable to Kit’s ears, which could also hear soft laughter, people singing, and the scrape of shoes over wooden boards as an energetic few danced once more.

In the midst of a famine that was getting worse every day, in a time of little work and less pay when you did find it, when uncertainty and disease prowled the streets, they danced. It brought a small smile to Kit’s face. This was why his people were still here, clinging to a cold rock in the midst of a colder sea.

They never gave up.

And then the witch was topping up his still mostly full cup with more of her noxious brew. He sighed and drank it as well. Because he was an Englishman, God damn it.

“—when the Madre de Deus was brought into Dartmouth two years ago?” the witch was saying, as Kit refocused on the conversation.

“Do I remember it?” Gillian blinked at her. “My group was one of those who helped loot it!”

“You did that?” Kit asked, surprised. Because the pillaging of the Madre de Deus was famous, being likely the biggest heist in English history.

Sir John Burgh, captain of the Roebuck, had been put in charge of a fleet of privateers originally outfitted by Sir Walter Raleigh, who had expected to lead them himself. Until he married one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting without her permission, that was. And thus shattered her persistent delusion that every man at court was desperately in love with her.

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