Her Highness' First Murder - Prologue
February 1546
The landlord of the Ox with Flowers glanced up as Mathilda hurried through her duties, her pert face for once serious as she worked. "Got an appointment, Tildy?"
The pretty wench grinned impishly, perfect front teeth showing white in the rush-light. "What do you care, John, with that wife o’ yours always keepin’ her eye on ye?"
Throwing a sodden rag into a bucket in the corner with a splash, Mathilda surveyed the room, nodded satisfaction, and pulled her cloak from a peg on the wall.
"It’s a cold night out there," John warned.
"It is that." She gave him a saucy wave as she closed the door behind her with a firm thump.
Outside, the girl hardly noticed February’s cold bite, though the wind lashed her heavy skirts around her ankles and fought to tear the woolen scarf from her head. When her lover proposed a private supper tonight, his accompanying look and warm touch had promised more.
Although a country girl until recently, Mathilda was not backward, and things were not so different in London as elsewhere. She knew what was expected of girls like her and accepted that it was why men came to them. Sometimes they were rough, tearing her clothing and leaving bruises on her otherwise flawless skin. The lover she hurried to meet tonight was different. Well dressed and well spoken, he treated Tildy, a runaway from Lincolnshire, like a lady, bringing ribbons for her heavy mane of hair and stockings finer than any she’d ever owned. Lately he had hinted that he might set her up in a small house. A girl like Tildy could ask for no more. She hated life at the Ox and would leap at the chance to be a kept woman, secure and pampered by any standard she’d ever known.
As the landlord had warned, the night was cold. Stars appeared to hang directly overhead, their light adding no warmth, only breathtaking beauty, which the girl chose to ignore. Hurrying out of the inn’s dimly lit courtyard and down the dark, winding street, Tildy felt sharp gusts of wind as she navigated buildings set higgledy-piggledy, making the way sometimes wide, sometimes narrow. Coming around a poorly built wall that leaned over her like an eavesdropper, she saw him ahead. Wrapped in a long, dark cloak, her lover waited at the entrance of an alleyway. His eyes shone hungrily at the sight of her, his burning gaze warming the air between them.
Knowing better than to touch him first, the girl simply stopped within reach of his arms, smiling self-consciously. "Little Mathilda." His voice was hoarse with desire. His gaze swept the street full circle: no one. Afraid he’ll be seen by his fine friends, she thought, caught with his doxy from the Shambles. A moment’s bitterness marred the meeting. Even if Tildy got her little house, he would always be ashamed of their liaison.
The thought faded as her lover’s arms went around her, drawing Tildy into the shadows of surrounding buildings. He kissed her with all the fire that had burned in his eyes moments before, hands caressing her pale throat gently. I’m only his doxy, but I’ll see that he is mine forever.
It was the last pleasant thought she had, for the hands on her white throat tightened in the darkness, squeezing until she fought to be free of them, uselessly, fleetingly. Her scream was choked to silence and there was only the brief rustling of her fruitless struggle. As Tildy sank to the ground, lifeless, the same hands pulled her farther into the alley, where her body suffered such indignities that death had been a mercy after all.
