A Thief Before Christmas by Jennifer McGowan

CHAPTER ONE
    DECEMBER 1558
    LEEDS, ENGLAND
    I wouldn’t have noticed the letter at all—except there were two of them.
    â€œAh, ah, ah! Keep yer ’ands to yerself!” Remarkably fast for her age, Agnes Farrow batted away my attempted grab. Which meant I could only frown as the two perfectly folded pieces of parchment drifted down to join the other bits of refuse huddled in a small pile at the old woman’s feet.
    A much larger and decidedly more intriguing pile of coin and jewelry was growing upon the pallet where Agnes was tallying our day’s work. I told myself that’s where my focus should be. That was certainly where every other member of our company’s focus would be when they joined us in these cramped rooms, after the Golden Rose acting troupe’s second performance of Christmas in Canterbury finished out on the inn’s wide courtyard.
    â€œHooray! We’re rich!” A tuft of white-blond hair atop a boy made up of more trouble than sense darted in front of me. I reached out and hauled the boy back before Agnes could have a chance to box his ears, never mind that he was her youngest grandson, the light of her own long and weathered life.
    â€œMeg!” Tommy Farrow yelped when he realized who’d ensnared him. He bounced up on his toes in excitement. “What did you get today?”
    â€œA fat lot more than you!” Agnes’s tone was fierce, but there was no escaping the look of indulgence in her bright brown eyes as she gazed at Tommy and shook her head. “When will you learn to tap men and ladies of worth, Tommy-mine? Paper won’t feed the troupe.”
    â€œBut how’m I to know what a pocket holds before I pick it?” Tommy shot back. I lifted my brows. He’d stolen the letters? Their worth should have dropped down a notch for me at that. Tommy knew how to steal only whatever was completely worthless.
    As the boy leaned over Agnes’s pallet, quite capturing his grandmother’s attention, I used the distraction to edge behind him and scan the pile of discards again. The letters were still there, of course, nearly hidden beneath sprigs of mistletoe and a half-finished knitted mitten, random bits of glass beads, and rags. Rags were the most common thing one found in pockets, as a fat body was generally a prosperous body, and every man from servant to sovereign wanted to look rich, even if he wasn’t. Accordingly, a thief had to be shrewd, or she’d end up with nothing but a fistful of useless wool for her troubles when what she needed was a flush money pouch.
    Still, the letters disturbed me. Why were there two? Where had Tommy come by them? In all of the cities and villages in which we performed and plundered, writing was a rarified act that not even the gentry usually possessed. And parchment itself was not cheap. Yet here were two letters that were not only carefully folded over and sealed with wax, they contained no ink on the outside surface . . . squandering wide expanses of the linen-pale parchment that normally would be written over once—and possibly twice—to save money. More interesting, the letters looked worn, the both of them, as if they’d been carried around in their owner’s pocket for an age.
    Who wrote a letter never to be sent? And why on earth would he do it twice?
    â€œOh, Grandmother! Look at this!” Tommy exclaimed just then, and I leaned over and scooped up the missives in a blink, tucking them into my skirts even as Agnes slapped back Tommy’s hands to set her pile of gold to rights.
    â€œEnough, boy, enough!” she snapped, now serious. “We’ve precious little time as it is.”
    She glanced up at me and I nodded, surveying the lot on her bed myself with a critical eye. “We can sell a good bit of the jewelry, but not here. It’s too dangerous,” I said, sighing. “The money will be all we can use.”
    â€œMaybe. Maybe