The Slaying of the Shrew Read Online Free PDF

one service or another. Smythe passed one column around which several lawyers were meeting with their clients or else negotiating with roisterers and layabouts who sold their honor for a shilling or two to bear false witness against someone in a case. Nearby, an ale seller had set up several small casks beside another column and was offering hardened leather drinking horns to passersby to taste his wares. Beside him, at another column, loaves of fresh baked bread were being sold, and the next column over was a place for buying books and broadsheets. Nearby, small portraits of the city's aristocracy were being sold, including, of course, all the fashionable courtiers and Her Royal Majesty, Elizabeth the Virgin Queen.
    Smythe passed several small tables made of wooden planks placed atop empty wine casks where tailors sold their wares, and further on, men and boys looking for work vied for the attention of prospective employers, who in turn were being distracted by the prostitutes parading up and down the aisle of the cathedral, meeting every strolling gallant's eye with a bold gaze, a bawdy comment, a hipshot and a wink.
    Over the echoing din, Smythe heard the sharp, staccato sounds of hoofbeats on the cathedral floor and quickly moved aside as a cloaked rider in a rakish hat went trotting past him down the center of the aisle, sword swinging at his side. Out for a casual morning canter through the house of God to look over the whores, thought Smythe. While he was certainly no papist, nor especially religious one way or another, Smythe could not help but think that the Dissolution over which the queen's father, King Henry VIII, had presided had become truly dissolute, indeed. He did not think that he would ever grow fully accustomed to the way that things were done in London.
    "Tuck!
Over here!"
    He turned towards the familiar voice, smiling when he saw Elizabeth waving to him. She was dressed in a long, voluminous, hooded cloak of green velvet that stood out from her body where her whalebone farthingale held her skirts out from her waist, making her seem to glide across the floor as she approached, and she held before her face on a slim rod a fashionable mask of green brocade and feathers, as many ladies did when they went out in public, especially if unescorted. But mask or no mask, Smythe would know her anywhere. Each time he saw her, he was reminded of the first time they had met, and how she had struck him nearly speechless with her beauty.
    It had been at the Theatre, shortly after he had started working there with Will, and she had arrived in Sir Anthony Gresham's coach. Smythe had not known whose coach it was, only that it bore the same crest upon its doors as the coach that nearly ran them down on a country road while he and Will were on their way to London. In the heat of his anger, Smythe had forgotten himself completely as he ran up to the coach and threw open its door, fully intent on dragging out its occupant and thrashing him, gentleman or not, only to be brought up short at the sight of Elizabeth sitting there alone. She had taken his breath away, and Smythe found that familiarity had not diminished in the least the effect she had upon him.
    She was nineteen, the same age as he, with pale blond hair, fair skin, and eyes so blue they almost seemed to glow. She was easily the most beautiful woman Smythe had ever seen, and he could scarcely believe that she was still unmarried, despite all her father's efforts to secure a husband for her. She was stunningly attractive, with a prominent, wealthy merchant for a father, and it seemed as if there would have been no shortage of eager suitors wanting to take her for a wife. However, anxious as he may have been to get his daughter married off, Henry Darcie would not accept just any suitor. In order to be suitable, a suitor for Elizabeth's hand in marriage had to be a gentleman, and preferably a titled one who could serve Darcie's desire for advancement. That alone narrowed