The Exiled Read Free

tomorrow.
    Anne reached up and carefully placed the little terracotta lamp on a shelf above his work table where the uncertain light spilled down to the painter’s best advantage, then began fastening iron-shod wooden pattens over her soft shoes.
    ‘Until tomorrow, then.’
    She was grateful that tomorrow would bring completion, for it had been a lengthy process sitting for the painter and she was impatient to have the picture home.
    Hans Memlinc had no idea how important his work was to Anne. It was only paint, canvas and the skill of his hands, but this picture was Anne’s private, tangible symbol of hope, hope for her future, and her future success in this city, and as such was worth every one of the carefully hoarded gold angels she would pay.
    Anne’s pattens clicked on the painter’s tiled floor as she left his studio smiling happily. Belated conscience struck him and he called after her, ‘I’ve kept you late, mistress. You must be careful going home. There are too many mercenaries in town this winter. Wild and silly, most of them, but no one is safe after the curfew bell.’
    She laughed. ‘I’m not worried. The Watch’ll have chained the streets by now. Soldiers all drink too much anyway. I can outrun them, Maestro!’ He heard her giggle as she clattered happily down his staircase and he found himself grinning.
    Anne was still smiling as Ivan, her guardian’s Magyar manservant, closed the front door of the painter’s house behind them. He’d been waiting in Master Memlinc’s warm kitchen, quite happy to while away another winter’s day chaffing little, shy Lotta and flirting with Eva, the cook–housekeeper. She was substantial, Eva, with an abundance of good flesh packed tightly into a pretty skin. He liked that. She liked him. They had been pleasant times.
    ‘The picture will be finished tomorrow, Ivan, so no more happy days with Eva.’ Spooked by Anne’s prescience, the man nearly dropped his flambeau. He crossed himself quickly, but she saw it.
    ‘What’s this, Ivan? A prayer? Who for? Eva?’
    Her laughter was so unforced, so clear in the dark, sharp air that Ivan was ashamed. She was not a witch, this girl, just clever — for a woman. Cautiously he smiled, and held the light higher.
    Anne pulled on her one winter indulgence — fleece-lined mittens — as she breathed deeply of the wood-smoke air. A few minutes’ brisk walk beside the frozen canal and she would reach her guardian’s new house with its warehouse near the Kruispoort — one of the nine fortified gates of the city of Brugge — but Ivan would have his hand on the hilt of a short stabbing sword the whole way.
    It was a good feeling, if she was honest, that he was her protector, for the town
was
filled with outlanders this winter: mostly mercenaries in the service of the Duke of Burgundy who roamed the streets waiting for the end of winter and the certainty of the coming spring campaigns. The Lowlands were still restless and their new duke had much to do to secure his Duchy, let alone deal with the French. Mercenaries are only ever half tame, everyone knew that, and winter made them dangerous: too much time on their hands and too much blood from rich food and good beer.
    Ivan understood. As a very young man he too had been dangerous — still was, in a more controlled way — which was why he’d been hired by Sir Mathew Cuttifer, Anne’s patron and guardian, to help protect his interests in this city. Anne fell into that category for reasons Ivan was not paid to understand.
    Brugge, this Venice of the North, was booming and there were rich pickings to be had, and not just for English merchants with interests outside Britain, like Sir Mathew. Young, landless men are always attracted to wealth, and many here had more ambition than a short lifetime’s service as one of the Duke of Burgundy’s paid fighters.
    And it was hard to be poor in such a place, hard not to be envious of other people’s good fortune — if you had none