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Since she’s paid nothing in years and already owes you nine pounds! She’ll at least pay for this, if I can make her.”
    “No - no, Bess!” the apothecary cried, knowing his child’s headstrong ways. “I forbid it. Say nothing. We can’t afford to lose her patronage. Why, she is close to the Queen, we may yet have a royal purveyorship!”
    “Ha!” said Elizabeth, shrugging. “Can’t eat that! If the Queen pays no better than her lords, I know what the shop book says -  ‘Desperate’ next the accounts of the Earl of Ormonde, and Lady deVere, and Lady Carlisle...”
    “Elizabeth!” Thomas pounded the floor with his blackthorn cane, the moisture of helpless anger in his sunken eyes.
    “Never mind, Papa,” she said in some contrition, patting his shoulder. “Trust me - pray don’t fret.” She ran downstairs to the shop, where a supercilious footman in the Carlisle livery was bullying Martha.
    “So, Mistress - “ he greeted Elizabeth, “ ‘ave ye brought it at last? ‘Tis ‘alf an hour gone, by St. ‘Pulchre’s bell thet ‘er lidyship’s been waiting,” but his face softened as he stared at Elizabeth. “Naw then - ye couldn’t ‘elp it, no doubt, sweet’eart.”
    She pushed past him and, opening the shop door, stepped outside. The magnificent Carlisle coach and four restive black horses blocked the street. A baker’s cart was drawn up patiently behind the coach, a crowd of urchins and beggars surrounded it. A postilion stood at the horses’ heads, soothing them. Elizabeth glanced at the gilded coach with its glass windows, at the coat of arms emblazoned on the door. Lucy, the Countess’s own arms - Percy impaling Carlisle, for she was the daughter of the great Earl of Northumberland. For a moment Elizabeth’s courage failed her, then she tapped resolutely on the windowpane while the coachman looked around in astonishment, and the footman came hurrying out of the apothecary shop.
    A dim figure moved inside, a face covered by a fashionable black velvet mask; peered through the window. Then the door was opened. “What is it, young woman?” asked a cool, pretty voice, tinged with the Border accent.
    “I am Elizabeth Fones, the apothecary’s daughter, m’lady,” said the girl, curtseying. “I’ve brought you the mithridate, my father being ill, and we crave pardon for the delay. There is one new secret direction for the taking of it that your ladyship should know.”
    “Indeed?” said the voice. The moment the coach door opened the beggars had rushed forward, and were now whining in chorus, with outstretched hands. “Alms, your noble ladyship, Christmas alms for the love o’ God ...”
    “Come in here, mistress,” said the Countess to Elizabeth, motioning with an ermine muff; as the girl obeyed and entered the coach, the Countess called impatiently to her footman, “Throw that rabble some farthings and be rid of them!”
    Elizabeth sank nervously on to the purple velvet cushions beside the Countess, for there was no other place to sit. There was warmth in the coach, from a foot-warmer of live coals, and it was deliciously perfumed by the jasmine which exuded from the great lady’s furs and from her ringlets of gilded hair half concealed by a rose satin hood. Elizabeth sniffed appreciatively, knowing from experience in the stillroom the difficulty of extracting scent like this, and she kept respectfully silent, bearing as best as she could the scrutiny of unseen eyes.
    She knew that all court ladies wore masks when they went abroad, but she found the nearness of one slightly disturbing and wondered if it hid any ravages of the smallpox from which Lady Carlisle had suffered some months before, when the apothecary had filled prescriptions frantically sent in for the Countess by the Queen’s own physician. At least the pouting rouged mouth and white chin below the mask were flawless.
    “Give me the mithridate,” said the Countess, stretching out a gloved hand on which sparkled