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London. Home. The Portuguese affair was over.
When I had crossed the Bridge and reached the city, I left my post horse at an i
As I rounded the corner into the lane, something hurled itself at me, a dark shape exploding from a dark corner so that instinctively I threw up my arms to protect myself. The next minute I was flat on my back in the dirt and a shaggy, smelly creature was half on top of me, alternately whining and licking me.
‘Rikki!’ I said, trying to sit up. I put my arms around his warm familiar shape. Unaccountably I found myself crying into his shoulder. His rough tongue set to work again.
‘Good lad,’ I said, managing at last to lift myself part way off the ground.
I ran my hands over his sides and back. His fur was matted and beneath it he was thi
‘Rikki! Why are you so thin?’
His only response was to sit on my feet and pant lovingly into my face. He was still wearing his collar, but otherwise, as far as I could judge in the growing dusk, he was in poor shape.
‘Has Joan been ill-treating you?’ I frowned. Joan had been a
‘Come on, lad.’ I managed to heave him off my feet and scramble up. ‘We both need a good meal and a wash. And I can see that I’ll have to spend hours combing the tangles from your fur.’
He leaned against my leg and pressed a wet nose into my palm. I rubbed my damp face with my ragged sleeve. My heart ached with the joy of seeing him again, the dog who had followed me halfway across the Low Countries from love and loyalty, at a time when I had barely known him. I owed my life to him.
We started up the lane together. Outside our house, a woman I had never seen before was sweeping the front step and scolding a boy of five or six back indoors. She was lit from behind by the light from the doorway, and I could see clearly that it was not Joan. Had my father taken on a new servant? But the woman looked too well dressed to be a servant. I approached her cautiously, for the past months had taught me to be even more distrustful of strangers than I had been before.
‘Is Dr Alvarez at home?’ I asked her.
The woman stopped her sweeping and stared at me. Then she leaned on her broom and frowned. ‘Are you his son? We were told his son had sailed on the Portugal venture.’
‘Aye,’ I said cautiously. Something was wrong.
‘I am his son, Christoval Alvarez.’ I frowned at her, suddenly full of mistrust. There was no Inquisition here. Surely my father was safe in London. Why was he not coming out to greet me?
‘Where is he?’ I demanded harshly. ‘Where is Dr Alvarez?’
‘You had better come inside,’ she said.
More by This Author
The A
The Travellers
A Ru
The Testament of Mariam
Flood
The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez
The Enterprise of England
Praise for A
‘an absorbing and intricate tapestry of family history and private memories … warm, generous, healing and hopeful’
Victoria Glendi
‘I very much admired the pace of the story. The changes of place and time and the echoes and repetitions – things lost and found, and meetings and partings’
Penelope Fitzgerald
‘I enjoyed this serious, scrupulous novel … a novel of character … [and] a suspense story in which present and past mysteries are gradually explained’
Jessica Ma
'The author … has written a powerful new tale of passion and heartbreak ... What a marvellous storyteller A
Publishing News
‘Her writing …[paints] an amazingly detailed and vibrant picture of flesh and blood human beings, not only the symbols many of them have become…but real and believable and understandable.’
Helen Brown, Courier and Advertiser
‘She writes with passion and the book, her fourth, is shot through with brilliant description and scholarship...[it] is a timely reminder of the harsh realities, and the daily humiliations, of the Roman occupation of First Century Israel. You can almost smell the dust and blood.’
Peter Rhodes, Express and Star
The Author
A
Her first three novels, The A
Currently she is working on a late sixteenth century series, featuring a young Marrano physician who is recruited as a code-breaker and spy in Walsingham’s secret service. The first book in the series is The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez, the second is The Enterprise of England and the third is The Portuguese Affair.
She now lives in Broughty Ferry, on the northeast coast of Scotland, with her husband, formerly vice-principal of the University of Dundee, a cocker spaniel, and two Maine coon cats.
http://www.a