The Fire Court

by Andrew Taylor

  When I had drunk my fill, she wiped the dribbles from my face and neck.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d sleep for ever.’

  Memories pushed into my mind, jostling each other in their haste. Fear rose in me like vomit. My mouth tasted sour. Friday evening, I thought. I was going to Scotland in the morning.

  ‘What day is this?’ I said, suddenly anxious. ‘Saturday? Sunday?’

  ‘Wednesday,’ Margaret said.

  I struggled with the arithmetic. ‘But that means …’

  ‘You’ve been here in this bed for five days.’

  I looked from Margaret to Cat. ‘The fire. I remember the fire.’ More memories forced their way to my attention: a ball of flames by Chelling’s bed; footsteps running down the stairs; a pain in my head. I raised my hand and felt the bulge of a bruise above the right ear. ‘But then …? Is he all right?’

  I saw a glance pass between them. Cat said rapidly, ‘Yes, you went to see Chelling. Do you remember? Before that you drank wine with Mr Hakesby and me at the Lamb and told us why you were interested in the Fire Court. You were angry because they were sending you to Scotland on a fool’s errand. Then you grew even angrier because we thought you should let the business alone.’

  ‘They brought you back on a door that night,’ Margaret said grimly. ‘Shouting your head off.’

  ‘But Chelling?’ I said.

  ‘He set fire to himself in bed,’ Cat said. ‘He was drunk – he overturned a candle probably, and the bed curtains went up. You tried to get him out, but it was too late. The top of his staircase was destroyed. They’ll have to rebuild it.’

  She fell silent. I remembered the dead weight of the man, small though he was. I remembered breaking open the locked door to the stairs. But the door had been unlocked when I had come up to Chelling’s chambers – how else could I have got in? – and I had left it standing open. I remembered the pain in my head. And the fireball glowing malevolently by the bed, with the draught from the open window fanning the growing flames. And I remembered the footsteps running away down the stairs.

  Cat went on, in a more hesitant voice, ‘You’ve had opium for the pain. It gives you dreams, sometimes. Vivid dreams. Like visions.’

  ‘But I didn’t dream this. Chelling was murdered.’ I looked up at their shocked faces. ‘As Celia Hampney was.’

  I was tired, and I closed my eyes. I heard the two women whispering to each other. I understood that they thought I had lost my wits, that the opium had so entangled me in my own dreams that they were more real to me than this living, breathing world with its rough edges and its hard corners. But I knew I had not imagined what I had seen. Opium brings dreams and visions; but it may also bring clarity of memory and precision of thought; if the angels have the capacity to think, they must think like this, always.

  Something eluded me. Something I had seen. But when?

  I opened my eyes. ‘How badly am I hurt?’

  Margaret’s face appeared above me. ‘There’s a wound on your head, master. It’s healing, God be thanked. But the fire caught you … it’s the left side.’

  ‘How badly?’

  Margaret’s features crumpled, and she glanced away. Then Cat was where Margaret had been.

  ‘You were burned from your face to your knee. The doctor says there will be scarring. So does Sam.’

  I frowned at her, struggling to understand this strange world where Catherine Lovett talked familiarly of my servant.

  Margaret misunderstood the reason for the frown, thinking I was dismissing Sam’s opinion as worthless. She fired up – almost literally, because her face became even more flushed: ‘He knows what he’s talking about, master, and better than most. When he was in the navy, his frigate was caught by a Dutch fire ship. He’s seen what fire can do to a man.’

  She continued speaking, and then Cat said something too. But by that time their words had lost their hard edges; they were blurring into one another; they merged and became a soft, shifting susurration, like the humming of bees going about their business. The sounds rose and fell, mixing agreeably with the hammering and the cries of children, until I fell asleep.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

  The bedroom was full of hard, clean light. I had already established that another night had slipped away, and now it was morning.

  Cat said tartly, ‘What does it look like?’

  She poured the contents of the chamberpot into the slop bucket, her nose wrinkling. She rinsed the pot with water from the jug and covered the bucket with a cloth.

  ‘Why are you in this house? Doesn’t Mr Hakesby need you in Henrietta Street?’

  She swung round to face me. ‘Do you think I’d be here unless I had to be? Do you think I’d be doing this?’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because I can’t go back to Henrietta Street even if I wanted to,’ Cat interrupted. ‘People are looking for me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know who, exactly. But it’s because I was foolish enough to let you drag me into your affairs.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I was at Clifford’s Inn yesterday,’ she said. She put down the pot at last and perched on the stool by the bed. ‘The Dragon Yard case came up before the Fire Court. Mr Hakesby was speaking for Mr Poulton, and Sir Philip Limbury had his man of business there, as well as Gromwell.’

  ‘Limbury?’ The name was familiar.

  She looked at me as if I were an idiot. ‘You remember him, surely? The freeholder, who has his own scheme for the site – Mr Hakesby mentioned him to you on our way to the Lamb.’

  I nodded with unwise vigour, and cried out with the pain. ‘What did the judges decide?’

  ‘A deferment, as Mr Hakesby hoped, but only for a week. There’s a possibility that Mistress Hampney made a new will, which would affect her interest in Dragon Yard. But that’s not the problem. Afterwards, I went into Staircase XIII.’

  It took me a moment to catch up with her. ‘The fire-damaged building?’

  She nodded. ‘Gromwell was going into it. But he was called away suddenly, and he left the door unlocked, and like a fool I went inside.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You were right about that door to the alley by the Half Moon. And on the floor above there’s another archway that could well go into the back of the new building, to Staircase XIV.’ She saw my dazed expression and added, ‘Where Gromwell has his chambers.’

  Fuddled by sleep and the lingering traces of opium, my mind needed a moment to grasp what she was saying. ‘Do you think Mistress Hampney might have come in that way? And someone might have taken her body out by the same route?’

  ‘I found the picture by the door to the alley,’ Cat said.

  ‘Picture? What picture?’

  ‘The one you said your father saw. The one over the mantel when he found the body.’ Again the nose wrinkled. ‘Women disporting themselves with satyrs.’

  I twitched in the bed and was rewarded by stabs of pain. This too. My father, as honest a man as had ever lived, had spoken no more than the truth, and nothing but the truth, even in his dotage. And I had been stupid enough, arrogant enough, not to know it for what it was.

  The pain subsided, steadying to an ache that ran from my left cheek down to the thigh of my left leg. ‘I need another dose,’ I muttered.

  ‘Not yet,’ Cat said. ‘If you have too much, you’ll need more and more, and then you will never stop.’

  ‘The picture. Why was it there?’

  ‘That puzzled me at first. But it was leaning against the wall, just by the door to the alley. What if they had piled all the furnishings your father mentioned by the door before taking them away?’

  I nodded, remembering the handcart I had seen in Fetter Lane when Sam and I had found the alley by the Half Moon, and when the tall, toothless man had warned us away before he rapped on the door. Sourface. ‘Why leave the picture behind?’

  ‘They probably didn’t see it. It would have been
concealed by the open door. It’s not very big.’

  ‘Did you bring it away?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Because Gromwell came back and he caught me there.’

  My head snapped round. I forgot the pain for a moment, I forgot that I needed opium. Cat looked very small on the stool, huddling into herself like a child that fears chastisement. She stared at me.

  ‘You fool,’ I said, angry with her for putting herself in danger, and angrier with myself for dragging her into this business. ‘You little fool.’

  ‘I’m no fool, sir,’ she snapped, ‘though you are to call me one.’

  There was a silence.

  She said, ‘I ran away. I was lucky. But he saw my face, and he’d seen me before with Mr Hakesby. That’s why I’ve come here. To hide.’

  Another day and another night drifted past me on a tide of sleep and fantastic dreams, coloured by the opium. It was not until Friday morning, all but a week since the fire that had killed Chelling, that I felt more like myself than I had for days. I was weak, partly from lack of food. But I was no longer possessed by that deathly tiredness.

  For the first time, I refused the morning draught of laudanum when Margaret offered it. The pain was bad, but I thought I could bear it now, or at least try to do so for an hour or two.

  I ordered Margaret to send Sam to me. He hopped across the room and hissed softly through his teeth, as he did when he was worried or confronted by a problem.

  ‘I shall rise,’ I said.

  ‘Margaret says you must lie in bed for longer.’

  ‘Who is master here?’

  Sam shrugged and said nothing. With my good arm, I threw my mug at him but misjudged my strength. The mug fell short.

  ‘You need to heal,’ he said. ‘That’s what they both say.’

  Both? Margaret and Cat?

  I said, ‘Have you heard from Whitehall?’

  ‘I sent a boy with a message to your master’s office. Mistress Hakesby wrote it, in my name. So they’d know you wouldn’t be going to Scotland.’

  Mistress Hakesby. Cat, despite her youth and her lowly position, had earned Sam’s respect. Or he was afraid of her, which came to the same thing.

  I said: ‘That was well done.’

  ‘They sent a man on Tuesday to ask how you did. Margaret told him, and he went away.’

  ‘They know about the fire?’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘But not …?’

  ‘No, master. Everyone thinks Chelling came back drunk as a lord and set fire to himself, and you were burned, trying to save him. That’s what I hear, anyway.’

  I pushed back the covers. I winced at the pain that even this effort caused me. I touched my face. The right side was itchy with stubble, almost a beard. A bandage encircled my head, masking the left cheek entirely.

  Sam started forward. ‘Master—’

  ‘I’m getting up. Help me.’

  Involuntarily, both of us glanced at my body. I was wearing a shirt of my father’s, patched and frayed but wonderfully soft and familiar. Underneath the shirt were invisible dressings. My left leg was wrapped in a loose bandage, whereas my right leg was white and hairy, its normal condition.

  I made an immense effort and dragged the right leg off the bed. It dangled towards the floor.

  ‘Come along. Help me with the other leg or I’ll turn you out on the street.’

  Sam grinned at me, recognizing that I was jesting. Probably. As jokes go, it wasn’t amusing. But it lightened the mood.

  He propped himself against one of the bedposts and helped me sit up. Ignoring my cries, he lifted my left leg off the bed. My bare feet touched the floor.

  When the pain had subsided, I said, ‘Now I shall stand.’

  ‘You’re a fool, master.’

  I repeated, between gritted teeth, ‘Now I shall stand.’

  Sam crouched, and I put my good arm across his shoulders. Slowly he straightened up. I cried out, again and again. But afterwards the waves of pain moderated into ripples, and then at last diminished to the uncomfortable tranquillity of dull, steady agony.

  I was standing upright, still supported by Sam. I had regained control over a tiny portion of my life. It was a small victory, and it might not last long, but it was a victory nonetheless.

  ‘I will need the pot,’ I said. ‘Then tell Margaret I will take some soup.’

  He stooped to fetch the pot from under the bed.

  ‘First, though,’ I said. ‘Where’s Mistress Hakesby?’

  He stood up. ‘In your father’s bedchamber.’

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘She was up half the night, master,’ Sam said with a hint of belligerence in his voice, as if ready to spring to Cat’s defence.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it was her turn to watch over you.’ He stared pityingly at me. ‘You didn’t know? Margaret and me, we’ve taken it in turns to watch over you at night. And since she came here, Mistress Hakesby does the same. Margaret tried to stop her, said it wasn’t fitting. Might as well have saved her breath.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘Why so melancholy?’

  Jemima looked across the table. She and her husband were dining alone. The servants were out of the room. The door was closed.

  ‘Melancholy?’ Philip said, barely raising his head to look at her. ‘I’m not melancholy at all. I’m in a very good humour.’

  ‘Then you keep it to yourself.’

  ‘Your pardon.’ He gave her a tight-lipped smile. ‘The Dragon’s Yard business drags on and on. Thanks to those old fools at the Fire Court.’

  ‘Can’t Browning do all that for you? My father wouldn’t mind if he spends more time on your affairs.’

  ‘There are some things, my love, that even Browning cannot do.’

  He spoke lightly but she was not fooled. Of late, Philip had lost his taste for society. He had kept within doors for days – in fact, now she thought about it, ever since he had come back to the house in the early hours of Saturday morning, almost a week ago. She smiled, not so much at Philip now, sitting across the table from her, as at the memory of how she had gone to his chamber that night, and he had laid his head on her bosom. She remembered with particular tenderness the softness of the short, dark hair on his scalp. There had been no lice among them. He was fastidious about such things and summoned Mary to use the comb almost every morning.

  She said, ‘You mustn’t trouble yourself so much. It’s only money, after all.’

  No longer smiling, he stared at her. ‘Only money? It isn’t always the money that matters.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  She shivered as memories crowded into her mind. Something cracked inside her, like an earthenware pot too close to the kitchen fire.

  ‘You miss the whore, don’t you?’ she said. ‘And now she’s dead, and I’m glad of it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I know it was you she was meeting all along. Not Gromwell. I was right all the time. You’re sick with love for her, and you will never be cured.’

  ‘You damned, stupid woman,’ Philip shouted in the sort of voice he used for the servants. ‘How can you talk such nonsense? Hold your peace or I’ll thrash you till you bleed for a week.’

  They stared at each other. He had never talked to her quite so harshly before. Law and custom allowed him to treat her just as he pleased, short of murder. God had ordained that, if Philip wished, he could beat her, he could shout at her, he could lock her up. But they were different, Jemima had thought, she and Philip were the exceptions to the general rule and they always had been. Her father had seen to that when he arranged the marriage settlement with the lawyers.

  ‘But you love me a little, sir – don’t you?’ she whispered.

  ‘Love?’ he said. Then, more loudly, ‘Love?’ He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘What do you know of love? What do you know of anything? You hide yourself away in this house like a snail in its shell.’

  He le
ft the room. Jemima listened to his footsteps in the hall and, a moment later, heard the slam of the study door. Minutes passed, as sluggish as the snail she was meant to be. Tears trickled down her cheeks, cutting tracks through the Venetian ceruse that caked the surface of the skin. Snail tracks.

  After a while she heard the study door open and Philip’s voice calling angrily for Richard. Then movements and voices in the hall, and the chinking and banging of bolts, chains and locks as the front door was opened and then closed. Afterwards, a silence settled on the house, heavy as a nobleman’s pall on his coffin.

  In a while, Jemima rang the bell. Mary came almost at once, as if she had been waiting for the summons.

  ‘Mend this for me.’ Jemima touched her cheek and laughed, a dry bark whose sharpness surprised even her. ‘What can be mended.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cat was surprised to see Marwood out of bed. Not only that, but standing. A chair had been brought up to the bedchamber, and he was holding the back of it with his good hand and standing by the window. He was alone.

  He turned to look at her as she came in. The gown he wore covered most of his body, though his body had few secrets from her now. But the bandages that obscured much of his face made him appear a stranger, or perhaps a corpse wrapped for the grave. What made him seem even odder was the absence of hair. The old Marwood had worn his own hair, and worn it long. But the fire had taken more than half of it, and Margaret had cut the rest while he slept one day to make him look less of a monstrosity. Cat wondered whether the hair would ever grow back on the left side of his head.

  He said, ‘I want a mirror.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When Margaret changes the bandages, I want to see what I’ve become.’

  A sight for nurses to frighten children with. Or something you pay a penny to see at Bartholomew Fair. She said, ‘Give it time. It will heal. Though I’m not sure that Margaret will ever recover.’

  He frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘From the shock of seeing you out of bed and on your feet. She told me she was so cross she wanted to slap you.’