The Ashes of London

‘Pray let me assist you, my sweet.’

Edward was standing almost at her shoulder. For a moment it was as if he had materialized from nothing, like the evil spirit he was. Chasing after that came the realization that he must have been waiting for her in the gap between the side of the big press and the corner of the wall.

He smiled at her. He wore his bedgown of padded silk trimmed with fur. Around his head he had wound a silk kerchief. He looked younger without his periwig, more like a bloated version of the boy he had once been.

The boy who had pulled her hair and put a dead crow in her bed.

‘Go away,’ she said, retreating. ‘I shall scream.’

‘Scream all you like, my love. No one will hear.’

He seized her as he spoke. His left arm circled her head and the hand clamped over her mouth and nostrils as he pulled her towards him. His right arm wrapped itself around her waist.

She struggled for breath. She kicked his shins but her soft indoor shoes made no impression on him.

Her left hand swept over the table and touched the candlestick. She picked it and jabbed the flame of the candle into his cheek. The light died. He swore. His grip tightened.

‘Hellcat,’ he whispered.

Darkness came. And pain.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_5018afc7-5e9f-53dc-9c1c-3ae77fab2328)

NOTHING LASTS FOR ever, Cat thought, for was there not always death to make an end of it?

She lay in the darkness. She was on her back still, her legs apart, her dress rucked up, for what was there to be modest about any more? The pain in her body was acute but strangely remote, as if it belonged to someone else, someone she had once known well and now was a stranger.

Sometimes a church clock struck the hour. That was strange too, the very idea that this devastated city still contained churches with clocks and bells that told the time.

Churches among the ashes of the dead.

Gradually other thoughts drifted into her mind. She could go to Aunt Olivia, praying to God she would not find Uncle Alderley tossing on top of her in the canopied bed.

But Olivia would say that those things were only to be expected, that this was what gentlemen always tried to do to pretty maids, and even to less pretty ones. She would say that Cat should have taken better care of herself, and above all she would say that it was Cat’s fault.

It was the way of the world. Men always tried to make love to women. That was what Olivia had said in the spring, when she had turned away a servant who had got herself with child. Cat had argued that the man should bear at least some of the blame.

‘But it was her fault, Catherine,’ Olivia had said, ‘just as it was Eve’s. A woman leads a man into sin, that’s what your uncle says, and of course he is right. The girl should have managed it better, and now she must live with the consequences. And there’s an end to it.’

Would they throw Cat into the streets, a defiled woman to live in the gutter as best she could? Probably not – they would simply pretend it had not happened. Master Alderley had his heart set on her marrying Sir Denzil, and Master Alderley was not a man who changed his mind once it was made up.

Another thought struck her. If she told her uncle and aunt, would they even believe her?

As a child Cat had been thrown from a horse and landed awkwardly on a heap of stones. This had been almost a year before she first had her courses and her body began to change. But after the fall, she had bled from the place where women bleed at that time of the month.

Cat felt herself but could not feel anything except pain. If there were no token of blood to show that she had lost her virginity, then why indeed should they believe her? In that case, it would be her word against Edward’s. Her word was worth nothing. But in his father’s eyes, Edward could do no wrong. She was merely the unwanted niece, a relation by law but not by blood, the child of a man whose name was not mentioned. To the Alderleys, her only value was as something to be traded, bought and sold.

Something to be robbed. Something to be defiled.

Even Jem had abandoned her. He would not help her – besides what could a crippled servant do? He would argue caution in all things, just as the foolish old man always did.

Time passed.

Never forget, never forgive.

Quite suddenly she knew what she would do. The decision arrived ready-made, needing no thought. It was there because nothing else was left to her.

The click of the latch made Cat catch her breath. She opened the door and listened.

The sounds of Barnabas Place settled around her – the creaks, the pattering of rodents, the whispering of draughts. The air was stuffy and still very warm.

She held up the candle, which accentuated the gloom. Her eyes adjusted slowly. This was the darkest hour before dawn. But the Fire still tainted the night sky. An uncurtained window at the end of the landing framed a sullen red glow.

With the bundle under her arm, she stepped from her room and closed the door. She wore her plainest dress. Her shoes were in the bundle, together with a leather bag containing a few small possessions, among them her box of drawing instruments.

Over her shoulders was the grey cloak she had stolen last night from the young man at St Paul’s. She felt a momentary pang of guilt. He had tried to help her, after all – had perhaps saved her life when she had panicked and run towards the cathedral in search of her father. She couldn’t remember much of what he had looked like, apart from the fact that he had been so thin you could see the skull beneath the skin. Also, he had heavy, dark eyebrows that belonged on a larger, older face.

Movement sent spikes of pain deep inside her body. She passed under an archway, turned right and hesitated at the head of the main staircase. Her candle was the only light.

These stairs led down to the balustraded landing, with rugs on the floor and sconces on the polished wood of the panelling, and with ornate plaster mouldings on the ceiling. All the magnificence was invisible.

Olivia’s chamber was down there, with the canopied bedstead. Beside it was Master Alderley’s closet, which had a bed in it, as well as a table, a large inlaid cabinet of Dutch manufacture and a number of presses. The third chamber was empty.

She listened, but all was quiet.

Cat continued down the landing to the archway to the spiral staircase. She found her way by touch, by memory, and by the variations in the darkness of shadows beyond the candlelight. She paused at every step and listened, though she desperately wanted to hurry. This, in reverse, was the route she had used last night, when Jem had brought her up to her chamber.

On the floor below, a door led to the side landing beyond. Unlike the main landing, which was within the shell of what had been the prior’s lodging in the days when the old monks had lived at Barnabas Place, this landing gave access to a different range at right angles to it. Her own chamber was in the upper floor of this building.

The landing took the form of a passage running along its outside wall, with four doors at intervals on the right-hand side. All these doors were closed. She slipped down the passage to the third door. Here she paused, and listened.

The sound of deep, rhythmic snoring reached her. She put down the bundle. She crouched until her cheek touched the ground. A current of air flowed through the gap under the door. But there was no light in the chamber beyond.

Cat stood up, wincing as another spike of pain stabbed her. The other rooms on this landing were unoccupied; they were furnished as bedchambers for the guests that so rarely came. At one time, Edward had slept in the third bedchamber in the main range, but his habit of returning in the early hours, usually drunk, had irritated Master Alderley beyond endurance; and in the end he had ordered his son to move into this wing.

She pushed her hand into her dress and took the knife from her pocket. She raised the latch.

The door opened silently – Olivia would not tolerate a squeaking hinge in any house of hers. The snoring increased in volume. Cat became unpleasantly aware of a fetid smell that reminded her of the wild beasts in the menagerie at the Tower.

Shielding the candle flame, Cat advanced into the darkness beyond. What little light there was showed her the curtains drawn about the bed. It also caught on someone standing beside it in the dark – a dwarf-like man with a great wig; and for a nightmarish instant she thought that Sir Denzil Croughton was waiting for her. The candlestick dipped in her hand, and she almost let it fall. Then reason reasserted herself: what she saw was Edward’s periwig on its stand.

The snoring continued. Cat drew back the curtain and held up the candle so its light shone into the bed.

Edward was lying on his back. For an instant she didn’t recognize him: he had taken off the silk handkerchief he wore at home when he was not wearing his wig. His naked scalp was as bald as a newly peeled potato and not unlike one in shape. He had thrown off the covers in the heat. He wore a white linen nightgown, open at the neck.

The snoring stopped without warning. In the sudden, dreadful silence, Edward was looking at her. She saw his eyes, with twin flames burning in them, one for each pupil, reflecting the candle.

Cat did not think. She jabbed the knife at the nearer eye. The tip snagged for a moment when it touched him, then it dug into the eyeball, which wobbled beneath the pressure like a boiled egg without its shell when you speared it with a knife.