her this part of his tale. “What does he look like?”
“’E looks like a Frenchman.”
“Tall? Short? Old? Young? Dark? Fair?”
Drummer frowned. “Older than you, and shorter—but not real old or real short. I reckon ’e ’as a real bad pockmarked face, but I didn’t pay him a whole lot o’ mind. I mean, I ain’t about to bubble on Jenny, so why would I? She said if anyone was to come lookin’ fer ’er, we was t’ keep mum.”
“So you do know where she is.”
The boy sucked in a quick breath as he realized his mistake. He edged toward the door but was stopped by the entrance of Morey, who came in bearing a heavy tray loaded down with sandwiches, small cakes, and a pitcher of steaming hot chocolate.
Hero said, “Here, let me fix you a plate of sandwiches. Do you prefer ham or roast beef?”
The boy swallowed hard. “Can I ’ave some o’ both?” he asked in a small, hopeful voice.
“You certainly may.” She heaped the plate with a generous selection of dainty sandwiches. “Is Jenny a London girl, born and bred?”
Drummer shoved a sandwich in his mouth and shook his head. “She and Jeremy—that’s ’er brother—grew up Bermondsey, down in Southwark. I remember ’im tellin’ me their family ’ad a room over the gatehouse o’ some old abbey down there. But their folks died o’ the flux some years ago, and they didn’t ’ave no kin, so they come up to the city lookin’ for work.”
“Is that where she’s gone now?” asked Sebastian. “To Southwark?”
Drummer swallowed another bite of sandwich. “Nah. I wouldn’t a told you if it was.”
Hero poured the boy a mug of hot chocolate. “We want to help Jenny, not harm her. She needs help, Drummer. I’m afraid those other men you mentioned who are looking for her might kill her if they find her. And they are determined to find her. You must tell us where she is.”
The boy paused in midchew, his gaze going from Hero to Sebastian and back.
Hero said, “I understand it’s difficult to know whom to trust.”
Drummer swallowed, hard.
“Tell us,” said Sebastian, his voice quiet but implacable.
“White ’Orse Yard,” Drummer blurted out, his chest jerking with the agitation of his breathing. “She’s got a room at the Pope’s ’Ead in White ’Orse Yard, jist off Drury Lane.”
Sebastian took the boy with him, along with a hamper packed with more sandwiches and cakes, and a warm coat that had recently grown too snug for Tom. Hero was cross about her inability to accompany them, but even she had to admit that the uproar provoked by the appearance of a gentlewoman in a Drury Lane tavern was unlikely to be helpful.
The warren of narrow, crooked alleys and foul, dark courts around the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters had long ago degenerated into a precinct of flash houses, low taverns, and rat-infested accommodation houses where families of ten or more could be found crammed into a single small, airless room. Sebastian made certain both his coachman and the footman were armed, and slipped a small double-barreled flintlock into his own pocket.
It was still several hours before nightfall, yet already the narrow cobbled lane leading to White Horse Yard was filling with a rough, half-drunken crowd and a thick mist that drifted in a dense, wind-swirled, suffocating cloak between the tightly packed houses.
“Why did she take refuge here? Do you know?” Sebastian asked as the carriage drew up at the end of the lane.
Drummer shook his head, his mouth full of cake. “I think meybe she used to work round about ’ere, when she first come up to London.”
“How do you know she’s here? Did she tell you?”
“Her brother, Jeremy, tumbles with us. She wanted ’im to bring ’er some o’ ’er stuff a couple days ago and ’e asked fer me ’elp. Only, she were right cross when she see’d me. That’s when she made me promise not to tell where she is.”
“She’s right to be cautious.”
The boy looked doubtful but paused to grab a couple more sandwiches and thrust them into his pockets before tripping down the carriage steps in Sebastian’s wake.
Sebastian grasped the lad firmly by the arm and held on to him as they worked their way through the surging, boisterous crowd. The damp, smoky air was thick with the smell of broiling meat and unwashed bodies and the pervasive, inescapable stench of rot.
The Pope’s Head in White Horse Yard occupied what looked as if it had once been