Honesty and Lies

Two girls with secrets meet in London in 1601.  Honesty has run away from a marriage her father wanted to arrange, and Alice has a darker secret involving an assassination attempt on Elizabeth I.   Alice leads Honesty into believing she has an important job at the court, but when Honesty, who is trailing her in hope of help, saves Elizabeth I from a man with a gun, she finds the girl is given a job alongside her.  That job is in the laundry, but Honesty has the gift of storytelling and becomes a favourite of the ladies of the court.  Alice is terrified of her brother and when his plot to kill the Queen fails, she finds even her father will not help her escape.  But Honesty comes to the rescue and the girls stow away in the hampers of the Globe theatre players lining the two up for another adventure.

This is told at a breathless pace in alternate voices, which carries the reader along, though with an engaging heroine in Honesty and an intriguing one in Alice, at no point does interest lapse.  There are many details of court life alongside those of ordinary life, including working in the laundry.  The nastier side of Tudor life, e.g., the petty jealousies of the court and the real poverty and grime of life in Southwark are also made clear for the reader.

The story could have done with some close copy editing; Barnaby the eight-year-old page, suddenly appears without being introduced to the reader, and on p47 Alice declares to herself that she loves Honesty’s stories but there is no evidence of her having heard many.  These need to be addressed in the next story as all the signs are there that there will be a sequel.