There. The base of the architrave. And now, at an angle of twenty degrees—
Her irritation faded as the lines of the east façade spread across the paper. In her mind, the same lines sprang up, newly translated from two dimensions to three, acquiring solidity as well as depth, existing in space and time. The miracle was familiar but no less astonishing for that.
While the two of them worked at their slopes, Mr Hakesby sat by the fire, reading and occasionally making notes in his crabbed hand. At present he was checking accounts and invoices, and scribbling notes on the margins of letters. He had caused a carpenter to fix a board to each arm of his chair, and these he used as a desk. His handwriting was now almost illegible, because of the ague. On a bad day, even Cat found it hard to read.
Time passed. The light faded. The bells of surrounding churches chimed seven o’clock, though not quite at the same time.
Mr Hakesby dismissed Brennan for the day. The draughts- man was due an extra fee for a piece of work he had done at home. Hakesby found the money in his purse himself and told Cat to make a note of the payment. She added it to the current sheet of sundry expenses. Glancing back, she saw an alarming number of entries already. She drew up a rough total in her head, and the amount staggered her. There were two months to go until the quarterly rent on the drawing office was due at midsummer.
The draughtsman came over to where she was sitting so she could pay him the money and initial the entry as a receipt. At that moment, Mr Hakesby retired to his closet to answer a call of nature.
Brennan took his time. He stood very close to Cat’s stool. He was fair complexioned, with pink cheeks and a sprinkling of freckles on his nose. He wore his own hair, which was sandy in colour. Cat saw two grey lice squatting among the roots where it fell into a parting on the left-hand side of his scalp.
He laid down the pen and blew on his initials to dry them. Cat felt his breath touch her cheek. Involuntarily, she turned her head. He took up the paper. He stared at her with pale eyes, neither blue nor grey, that made her think of pebbles on a shingle beach.
She held out her hand for the paper, anxious for him to be gone. His hand touched hers. She snatched it away.
‘Less haste,’ he said, smiling, ‘more speed. What’s the hurry?’
He leaned on the table, resting on his right hand. His left hand touched her neck in a caress which was as light as a feather. She seized her dividers and jabbed them between his index and middle fingers, missing them by a fraction of an inch on either side. He snatched his hand away. The points of the dividers had passed through the expenses sheet and dug into the wood of the table.
He raised his hand. ‘God damn you, you could have stabbed me. My right hand, too.’
‘Next time I will stab you.’ Cat tugged the dividers free from the table and turned the points towards him. ‘And it won’t be your hand.’
‘Ah.’ He lowered his arm and grinned at her, exposing long, yellow canines. ‘A vixen. I like a woman with spirit.’
The closet door opened. Brennan sauntered over to the peg where his cloak was hanging.
‘Why are you still here, Brennan?’ Hakesby said. ‘I thought you’d be gone by now.’
The draughtsman had recovered his composure. ‘Talking to Jane, sir.’ He bowed low. ‘I wish you goodnight.’
‘He promises well,’ Mr Hakesby said as his footsteps sounded on the stairs. ‘Particularly on the fine detail. Dr Wren was right.’
Cat busied herself with throwing another shovel of coals on the fire, keeping her face averted to conceal her rising colour. The fire was a luxury at this time of year. More expense. Hakesby craved warmth, a symptom of his illness. His blood ran cold nowadays, he said. Colder and colder. She stood up and looked at him.
‘Come here,’ he said.
She put down the shovel and stood beside his chair.
‘This damnable question of money,’ he said. ‘I wish I had not taken yours.’
‘Sir, you had no choice in the matter. Neither of us did. If you hadn’t taken it, both of us would have starved.’
Cat had lent him sixty pounds in gold on Lady Day, all the money she had in the world, taken from her dead father’s body. Hakesby had been behindhand last quarter’s rent and the wages for his employees. He had owed his own landlady for two months’ board, and there had been a host of other debts. The commissions were flowing in but few clients paid promptly for the work. With luck, most of the money would come in its own good time, and they would be more comfortable, but in the meantime they all had to live.
‘Money confers an obligation,’ he said. ‘I’m worried I may not be able to discharge it.’
‘Of course you will. But at present we need ready money. Which is why Marwood was a gift from heaven, sir. If you go to a moneylender, they would rob you.’
‘I can’t get reasonable terms.’ Hakesby held up his right hand. The bony fingers fluttered. ‘This grows worse.’
‘It’s been a hard winter, sir. Everyone says so. But now summer is here, the warmth will soon—’
‘I have seen the doctors. This ague of mine will not get better. In time, it may touch the mind, as well as the body. With your help, and Brennan’s, and perhaps another draughtsman’s, we shall manage for a few months, perhaps a few years. But then …’
‘We shall contrive somehow,’ Cat said. ‘If you rest more and worry less, the ague will progress more slowly.’
‘And how will I pay you back if I cannot work? Or Marwood?’
‘You give me shelter, sir, and you give me work. That is repayment. We’ll manage with Marwood. He looks prosperous enough to be kept waiting a little.’
After a pause, he said: ‘What will become of you if I’m not here?’
A silence spread between them. Cat did not want to think about the possibility of Hakesby’s death. It was not just the trembling that was growing worse, it was the depression of his spirits.
Hakesby straightened in his chair, squaring his shoulders as if for a fight. ‘Fetch me the ledger, Jane. We shall reckon up the accounts. Let us find out how bad matters really are.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘My husband,’ Jemima said, sitting at her dressing table in Pall Mall and staring sideways at her reflection in the mirror, ‘is a fortunate man.’
And Mary, whose own reflection shimmered and shifted behind her mistress’s, murmured like a mangled echo, ‘Yes, my lady, the master is very fortunate. I’m sure he knows it too.’
Yes, Jemima thought, and when my father dies and Syre Place and everything else is mine, he will be even more fortunate. Because of me. When her father died, her husband would have the management of Syre Place and everything that went with it. Including herself – unless she could learn the art of managing him.
When she was ready, she descended the stairs, one hand on the rail of the bannisters, the other clutching Mary’s arm. She wore her grey taffeta, sombre yet elegant, and a pendant with a diamond the size of a pigeon’s egg. Mary had dressed her hair and applied the patches and powders to her face.
Rather than go directly to the dining room, where there was already a murmur of voices, she went halfway down the stairs to the kitchen. The smells of their dinner came up to meet her, and made her feel queasy. For a moment her hand touched her belly. Was it possible she could be pregnant?
In the kitchen, the birds were turning on the spit over the fire, the fat sizzling as it dropped on to the hungry flames. The cook and the scullery maid curtsied, Hal the coachman doffed his hat and made his obedience, and the boy, Hal’s son, tried to hide behind the scullery door until Hal dragged him into the open and cuffed him so hard he fell against the wall. The Limburys did not maintain a large establishment in London – all of their servants were in the kitchen, apart from Richard and Hester, who were serving at table upstairs, and the gardener.
Without speaking, Jemima stared at them. She had sent Mary down with her orders. But it was good to show oneself in the kitchen too, even if one didn’t wa
nt to. Marriage was a contract, her father had told her, and she would fulfil her part of it, to the letter, even if her husband faltered in his.
Faltered. What a puny, insignificant, inadequate word.
‘Well?’ she said.
The cook curtsied again. ‘Yes, my lady. Everything as it should be.’
She held the cook’s eye for a moment, as her mother had taught her to do all those years ago at Syre Place, and then let her eyes drift over the other upturned faces, from one to the next.
‘The guinea fowl will turn to cinders if you don’t have a care.’
The cook gave a strangled yelp and dived towards the fireplace. Without a word, Jemima tightened her hold on Mary’s arm and turned. As they climbed the stairs to the hall, she felt as much as heard the rush of pent-up breaths escaping in the kitchen below.
In the hall, she hesitated. She had not seen Philip since he had come to her chamber the previous afternoon, though this morning he had sent up to make sure that she would dine with them today. She did not like meeting strangers, even in her own house. She did not want to see Philip, either.
As if sensing her mistress’s anxiety, Mary touched her hand and murmured: ‘You look very fine, my lady. I’ve never seen you look better.’
In the dining room, the gentlemen rose and bowed as she entered, and Richard moved forward at once to help her. Richard was Philip’s servant, brought with him from his other life before their marriage. He wore his livery and had his teeth in, so he made a respectable show. Mary said he hated to wear his teeth because they hurt his gums.
Jemima curtsied to the gentlemen and allowed herself to be assisted to her chair.
‘My wife has not been well these last few days,’ Philip said, ‘but she would not keep to her bed when she knew you would be dining with us, Sir Thomas. And our old friend Gromwell too.’
‘What a charming diamond,’ Gromwell said, staring admiringly but respectfully in the direction of Jemima’s bosom. For all her dislike of him, she was forced to concede that he was a tall, fine-looking gentleman. He had once known great prosperity but his fortunes were now much reduced. ‘My Lady Castlemaine was wearing one that was very like, only the other day, but it wasn’t nearly so fine. Smaller, too.’
‘It was my mother’s,’ Jemima said coolly, impervious to his attempt to charm her. The last time they had met, at Clifford’s Inn, his charm had been in short supply.
‘Quite outstanding,’ he murmured, leaving it discreetly ambiguous whether the compliment referred to her diamond or her bosom.
Sir Thomas cleared his throat and ventured into a complex and finely nuanced expression of opinion, which, though initially obscure, seemed to suggest that in this case the wearer adorned the diamond, rather than the other way round.
Philip smiled down the table at her, his brown eyes soft and adoring. It was a smile designed to melt the heart and during their courtship it had melted hers, against her better judgement. ‘Lucius is right, my love,’ he said, ‘and Sir Thomas too – you look very well today, better than ever perhaps, if that can be possible.’
‘How can one improve upon perfection?’ Gromwell enquired; his manners were courtly though, like his yellow suit, they were a trifle old-fashioned. ‘But my lady has. Behold, a double miracle, a miracle of both nature and logic.’
‘You are pleased to jest, sir,’ she said automatically, and twitched her lips into what could pass as a smile.
‘I never jest on sacred matters, madam.’
You parasite, she thought, and smiled and nodded her head while the gentlemen laughed and toasted her. Duty done, they went back to their conversation.
‘I had no idea you would be sitting on the Dragon Yard petition,’ Philip said to Sir Thomas. ‘What a coincidence.’ As Jemima knew to her cost, he had the knack of speaking the clumsiest, crudest lie with such assurance that it became a self-evident truth. ‘It is so truly admirable that you judges sit for love of country, and for the city, and not for gold. You will be a pattern for future generations.’ He raised his glass. ‘A toast. Good health and prosperity to our Fire Court judges.’
They drank solemnly, and Hester came to the door with the guinea fowl, now dressed for table in their sauce. Jemima tasted a morsel and found the dish perfectly cooked, which pleased her, for she had pride in the food served at her table, as in other matters that belonged to her.
‘I sometimes attend these hearings myself, sir,’ Gromwell said. ‘Not that I have a pecuniary interest in them, you understand, but for the sheer quality of the judgements.’
‘You’re a lawyer, sir?’ Sir Thomas asked. ‘I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you in court.’
‘I’ve never practised, sir. As a young man, however, I passed many profitable hours in the study of the law, and I believe I retain the ability to appreciate a well-argued case’ – he bowed towards Sir Thomas – ‘and a well-considered verdict.’
The gentlemen ate, and drank, and drank again. The room grew warmer. Sir Thomas was obliged to retire behind the screen to relieve himself. Jemima wanted to laugh at them, at their mockery of good fellowship, but instead she picked at her food and smiled at the compliments which were thrown her way like scraps to the bitch under the table; occasionally, as a well-bred hostess should, she threw in the sort of question designed less to elicit information than to allow the hearer to shine in his answer. But she said nothing to Gromwell.
Later – half an hour? an hour? – the conversation returned to the subject of the Fire Court. ‘It is not a court of law,’ Sir Thomas was saying, apparently to herself, ‘though our judgements have the force of law, and have the ability to override such things that are usually considered sacrosanct. Leases, for example, and contracts relating to property.’
‘And if I understand you correctly, sir,’ Gromwell put in with the air of an eager student, ‘your judgements do not set a precedent, but apply only to the petition under consideration.’
‘Precisely.’ Sir Thomas nodded vigorously and held out his glass for more. ‘You have understood me perfectly, sir.’ He beamed at Gromwell. ‘If I may say so, it is the law’s loss that you decided to apply your energies in other fields of knowledge. Our powers are intended simply to help London return to its former glory as soon as possible, for the good of the City and the Kingdom as a whole.’ He hammered his fist on the table. ‘And indeed the world. For does not our trade encircle the entire globe and enrich all it touches?’
This led to another toast, after which Philip said, smiling, ‘And if all goes well, sir, with the wise help of the judges, we shall do more than restore London. We shall increase its glories for centuries to come.’
‘I suppose Dragon Yard will be a case in point,’ Gromwell said. ‘Eh, Philip? If the decision next week goes in your favour, that is.’
Here we are, Jemima thought, we have come at last to the point of this tedious meal.
Gromwell turned to the judge. ‘I’ve studied the plans. It’s a most noble development, sir, with houses of the first class, laid out and built in a way that will make them proof against future fires. Safe, commodious and an ornament to the City. And also to the benefit of the public and of trade, I understand. It will provide another way to Cheapside, thereby easing the congestion of traffic there.’
Twisden’s face became serious; he looked like a flushed owl. ‘No doubt, sir, no doubt. Though all that would require considerable investment.’
‘We must not weary Sir Thomas with talk of business.’ Philip smiled round the table. ‘Would you care for a hand or two of cards, sir?’
The judge brightened. ‘If her ladyship would not object. And Gromwell too, of course.’
‘I should like it above everything,’ Gromwell said, smiling. ‘What would you say to lanterloo? And perhaps a shilling or two on the outcome?’
‘Why not? It adds a certain spice, does it not?’
‘I think, sir,’ Jemima said, ‘if you would not object, and if Sir Thomas and Mr Gromwell would not t
hink me discourteous, I shall leave you to your play.’
‘Of course they will excuse you, my love,’ Philip said. ‘You are not fully yourself yet, and you must not overtire yourself. We can play with three as well as four. Richard? Send for Mary to help her mistress upstairs.’
A moment or two later, she withdrew. Sir Thomas bowed so deeply he stumbled against a chair and almost fell.
‘All well, my lady?’ Mary said softly as they climbed the stairs.
‘Well enough.’
Jemima was tempted to add ‘for your master’, but held her peace. She would lay good money that Philip would have known beforehand of Twisden’s taste for lanterloo, and that he would have arranged with Gromwell for the judge to win a pound or two from each of them.
When he was courting her, Sir Philip Limbury had seemed a creature of impulse, and his love for her had seemed as open and sincere as the sun itself. After their marriage, however, it had not taken her long to learn that he did little or nothing by chance. There was a purpose in almost everything he said and did. Sometimes more than one purpose.
When she was back in her chair by the window, and the chamber door was closed, she called Mary to her. ‘The other matter. There’s nothing? You’re sure?’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘The servants will know. They always do. Richard? Hal?’
‘Hal Coachman would blab, madam. Richard, maybe.’
Jemima looked up at Mary. ‘Talk to Richard. See if he will let slip anything about Thursday.’
‘That one gives nothing for nothing, madam. He serves the master and himself. No one else.’
Jemima ran her tongue over her lips. ‘Then make him desire you. See if that will open his toothless mouth. I must know who the woman was.’
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