When I woke, it was broad day. I lay there a moment or two, relishing the absence of pain all the more because I knew it would not last. I was at peace with myself for the first time in days, if not weeks. My mind was empty of clutter. Perhaps that was why those three words chose to float serenely through my mind like leaves on a stream, just as they had on Tuesday.
The mark of Cain.
My father’s words, from the last time I had seen him, the last time we talked. Everything went back to there: to the day he had gone to Clifford’s Inn and then, that evening, rambled on and on to me about what he had seen, until I was sick of his childish nonsense, and perhaps ashamed to own such a man as my father. If he was looking down on me from Paradise, perhaps my father was ashamed of me.
I swung my legs out of bed, ignoring the stabs of pain, and found my gown and slippers. I took up my father’s Bible from the night table and went slowly downstairs, one step at a time. Sam and Margaret were arguing about something in the kitchen. I went into the parlour.
There was an old press cupboard in the corner. The open box containing my father’s possessions was on the top shelf. I took it down and put it on the table, with the Bible beside it. I sat in the chair and picked through the contents. I was slow and clumsy. Both my hands were bandaged now.
Here was all that remained of a life. The pieces of type, the scarred folding knife and the rag looked smaller and shabbier than before. So did the Bible. I took up the book and it opened at the end to show me my mother’s hair pinned to the back cover. I turned to the beginning.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis, chapter one, verse one. My father had read his Bible every day of his life, apart from his last weeks when he could no longer decode the black marks on the paper let alone find any meaning in them. Even then, though, he would hold the book open on his lap and turn the pages mechanically, as a Papist tells the beads of his rosary. He had known his Bible as intimately as a man knows the body of his lover. He had found comfort in touching it.
Genesis, chapter four. Cain kills his brother Abel. God condemns him to wander the earth as a fugitive and a vagabond. That is Cain’s punishment for murdering his brother. God forbids anyone to shorten his punishment by killing him, by granting him the easier fate of a swift death.
And the Lord set a mark upon Cain lest any finding him should kill him.
Yes, I thought, I see what my father meant at last, and the knowledge shocked me. I closed the book, went to the door and shouted for Sam.
Sam and I took another jolting, painful ride in a hackney. With a heroic effort, he said nothing in the gloom of the coach’s interior, but he stared reproachfully at me, and that was words enough. I was meant to be lying in my own bed, with Margaret fussing over me and Sam guarding me.
At Whitehall, I gave him money to pay off the driver and let him help me out of the coach. People stared at us as we made our slow way past the guards at the gate. One soldier made as if to stop us, but his sergeant knew me, and laid a hand on the man’s arm to restrain him.
It was worse in the Great Court. People pointed at us. I heard someone tittering. Sam and I made a moving tableau of infirmity – the cripple with only one leg and his crutch, and a man with a maimed face, shabby clothes and the gait of an old man. It must have been hard for them to tell who was supporting whom.
I sent Sam to enquire for Mr Williamson. We were directed to Lord Arlington’s office. I waited in the yard, propped against a mounting block, while Sam took my message to Williamson, begging the favour of a word with him. I didn’t think that Williamson would appreciate my calling at my lord’s office. Those of us who worked for him at Scotland Yard rarely ventured to my lord’s unless our master commanded us to wait on him there.
It was a fine morning, and the mounting block was in the sun. While I waited, I closed my eyes and let tiredness roll over me. I don’t know how long I was there. I felt something poke my shoulder and opened my eyes with a start.
Williamson was in front of me, his back to the sun so his face was little more than a shadow under his hat. Sam hovered behind him, keeping a discreet distance.
‘Forgive me, sir,’ I said, trying to rise. ‘I must have—’
‘Sit down,’ he said, running his eyes over me. ‘God’s wounds, you look even worse than before. Where’s your periwig?’
‘In the Thames, sir. Thank you for—’
‘I might have known. You’ll have to get another. You’ll pay for this one yourself.’
I wondered how I would manage that.
Williamson sniffed. ‘I don’t know what you did on Wednesday, but it’s the talk of the town. And the Court. Half the bridge burned down. A gentleman stabbed to death by a servant maid, who is then killed in her turn by a Groom of the Stool. Lady Limbury made to look a fool in public. Or worse. Good God, what a mess.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
‘And that business at the Fire Court earlier in the day. I hate to think what her ladyship’s father will say when he hears the whole story. Sir George Syre has many friends at Court, and he dotes on his daughter.’ Williamson made a noise in the back of his throat which was the next best thing to a dog’s growl. ‘The only mercy is that no one seems to have realized that you were my man. You’re mentioned in two reports of what happened, but not by name.’
He paused. My eyes were adjusting to the light. To my amazement I saw that he was smiling.
‘So,’ he went on. ‘God willing, it has worked out well, or it should do. Limbury is disgraced, and out of the Bedchamber. He and his wife have already left London. The King isn’t at all pleased with Chiffinch. It won’t last, but my Lord Arlington finds it particularly convenient at present.’
I felt a rush of anger. For Williamson, all this – the killings, the sufferings of the living – had been reduced to a squabble for power and influence over the King in the back stairs of Whitehall. ‘But, sir,’ I said, ‘there are also the murders.’
‘You said Gromwell was responsible for them. In that case, it’s fortunate that he’s dead. For all of us. The maidservant did us a favour.’
‘It is possible that he didn’t kill Celia Hampney.’
He scowled. ‘You said she was killed in his chamber.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Then who else could have done it?’
I opened my mouth and paused. The mark of Cain. But what did that amount to? And did I really want to explain about my father’s part in this, which I had concealed for so long? I said, ‘I’m not sure, sir. It’s just that we have no actual proof that he did. I’m sure he helped to move the body but—’
‘Of course we have proof,’ Williamson interrupted. ‘You tell me she was killed in Gromwell’s chamber. You also say that he was responsible for moving the corpse and leaving it for carrion among the ruins. You surely don’t dispute that the threat of exposure led him to kill Chelling and the maidservant?’
He paused, and that was my last chance. I didn’t take it.
‘Of course Gromwell killed her as well as the others,’ he said. ‘The evidence we have would convince a judge and jury.’
I bowed my head.
‘Go away, Marwood,’ Williamson said, not unkindly. ‘By the way, the King declined to sign the warrant that Chiffinch gave him.’
I looked up. ‘What warrant, sir?’
‘The one to remove you from your clerkship to the Board of the Red Cloth. Either he wanted to cross Chiffinch or he has a kindness for you. Though I can’t think why that should be. Either way, the post is still yours.’
I stared stupidly at him, gradually absorbing the meaning of his words.
‘Go home,’ Williamson said. ‘I’ll see your salary is paid as usual. Restore yourself to health and make yourself look respectable. Then come back to work.’
He strode away without a backward glance.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
To a tavern with Sam, for the poor man deserved something for his servi
ce and for my bad temper, and then home by water.
Cat Lovett was waiting for me in the parlour. She was talking to Margaret, and the smells of dinner rose from the kitchen.
I was glad to sit down, though I felt better than I had expected. Perhaps the ale I had taken in King Street numbed some of the pain. It helped with the craving, too. I wanted laudanum, but so far I had kept to my resolution during the night.
‘Mr Hakesby has sent me with some money,’ Cat said. ‘Not all of it, but something on account.’
She laid a small paper packet on the table. I let it lie there. I was glad to have it. Though Williamson had promised to pay my salary, I was running short of ready money.
‘Ten pounds,’ she said. ‘He wants a receipt.’ She added quickly, as if defending herself from an accusation I hadn’t thought of making, ‘That’s why I waited for your return.’
‘I need paper and pen.’
But Margaret said that dinner would be spoiled if she did not bring it now, so I told her to serve it. Without my saying a word, she assumed both that Cat would dine with me and that Cat was no longer to be considered merely as another servant.
When the food was on the table, she and Sam left us alone. Cat and I sat opposite each other. At first we ate and drank in silence, seeking refuge in food. The bandages on my hand made eating slow and messy. She studiously avoided watching me. She seemed more restless than usual, shifting on her stool and glancing about the room. I knew she must blame me for what had happened to her on Wednesday, and indeed for dragging her into the Fire Court affair in the first place.
When we had run out of silence, we talked like polite strangers, enquiring at length about each other’s health. That didn’t last long.
‘Margaret said you went to Whitehall this morning,’ she said, breaking the second silence, which had grown even more uncomfortable than the first.
I told her what Williamson had said.
‘It’s over?’ Cat said. ‘All of it?’
‘I think so.’ Without my intending it, my hand touched the scars on my cheek. ‘For Williamson and Chiffinch, at any rate. And the rest of them at Court.’
‘It’s all to the good, sir, surely? You’ll get another wig, and we may go on with the rest of our lives.’
‘But what about my father?’
‘What about him?’ Cat was not a woman to mince words and make palatable nothings out of them. ‘You can’t bring him back to life.’
‘There’s something I didn’t tell you. After the wagon went over him, as he lay dying, the crossing-sweeper told me he asked where the rook was.’
‘“Rook”?’ She stared blankly at me. ‘The bird? Or the piece in chess? Or did he mean to cheat?’
‘It was his word for lawyers. From their black plumage, I suppose, and because he felt they’d cheated him out of his liberty and life. He said Clifford’s Inn was a rookery. A place of rooks.’
‘And therefore you think one of them killed him?’
I shook my head. ‘Not killed. Caused his death. There’s a difference.’
‘You’re chopping words and meanings, sir. What’s the profit in that?’ Cat glanced at the unopened packet of money on the table. ‘I must go. Shall we finish our business?’
‘In a moment. The sweeper thought that someone was chasing after my father. A rook, I think, if his last words meant anything. One of the lawyers, one of the people he had seen in Clifford’s Inn.’ I shrugged, which made me wince. ‘It could have been Gromwell, who came from the rookery. You see, Gromwell wouldn’t have realized my father’s wits were wandering – he would have thought him a potential witness, someone who had seen the body of Celia Hampney in his chamber. But in his hurry my father stumbled and fell under the wagon. And then he wasn’t a problem for Gromwell any more.’
‘Let it go,’ she said. ‘This is madness. You’re like a dog with a bone, except there’s some purpose to that.’
‘And there’s another thing. The woman my father followed into Clifford’s Inn. I told you. You remember? He thought she was my mother when she was young. But he told me that she bore the mark of Cain, and that confused him. Why would my mother have borne the mark of Cain?’
‘What did he mean by it?’
I shrugged, and wished I hadn’t because of the pain it caused. ‘What does it mean to you?’
Cat said slowly, ‘The Lord set the mark on Cain so no one would kill him. He was condemned to live and wander the face of the earth for ever.’
‘You saw Lady Limbury’s birthmark. Was that my father’s mark of Cain? If there’s any meaning at all to what my father said, it must surely be that he followed Lady Limbury into Clifford’s Inn about the time of the murder.’
‘Are you really saying that this means Lady Limbury killed Celia Hampney?’ She laid down her knife and lowered her voice. ‘And Gromwell committed two more murders to protect her? For God’s sake, sir. If you say that abroad, they’ll throw you into Bedlam. Or worse.’
‘But don’t you see? Even if it was Lady Limbury who killed Mistress Hampney, Gromwell faced ruin, and perhaps the gallows as her accessory. And if he saw my father following her to his chambers around the time of the murder, that explains why he chased after him the next day – to stop him talking, or at least find out who he was, what he had seen. My father fled from him, as he fled from anyone he thought was a lawyer, and Gromwell pursued – and then came that cursed wagon.’
A church clock was striking the hour.
‘It’s one o’clock,’ Cat said. ‘Mr Hakesby will be worried.’
‘I can’t prove anything,’ I said. ‘So it doesn’t matter. I can’t tell anyone, except you.’
‘And I shall do my best to forget it. So should you. We’ll never know which of them killed that poor woman. And it doesn’t matter now, not to you, not to me. Will you count the money?’
Her voice was hard and brisk. I pushed aside my plate. The little parcel of coins was secured with string. Hindered by the bandages, I fumbled at the knot.
‘Let me do it.’
I shook my head. I was cross with her for the way she had brushed aside my confidence. Besides, I thought I heard in her voice the note of pity that she sometimes used to Hakesby. I could not bear her pity.
The knot resisted me. I stretched out my hand to the box of my father’s possessions and drew it towards me. I took out his knife. After a struggle, I managed to open it.
The blade and the corresponding slot in the handle were caked with a powdery substance. I scraped part of it with my nail, dislodging a shower of tiny rust spots. There was something else there, too, caught between the handle and the blade, just above the hinge that kept them together.
Yellow threads.
I stared at them, my mouth open, my face pricking with sweat. Perhaps Lady Limbury hadn’t killed Celia Hampney, after all. Nor had Gromwell.
I looked up. Cat was watching me. I knew how fast her mind worked. Very slowly, I began to close the knife.
Perhaps Gromwell had chased after my father for another reason. Yellow silk, from a woman’s gown?
‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Let me see.’
The moment trembled in the balance. Perhaps I should have closed the knife and slipped it in my pocket. Perhaps I should have taken the money, signed the receipt and ordered Cat to leave the house. Instead I passed the knife across the table.
She examined it. ‘Whose is this? Where did you find it?’
I could have lied. I could have tried to bluster it out. But I owed her something for all that had happened, and the truth was better than nothing. ‘It was my father’s. It was in his pocket when he died.’
Cat frowned. ‘I don’t understand. Why?’
I knew what she was asking: why would my father have stabbed Celia Hampney? ‘Because his straying wits took him to strange places. Because he believed that she was a whore. She was a sinner, and he was punishing her for her sins. To prevent her leading men to sin. Because he felt it was God’s will. His God was very
terrible.’
God the father. We never really know our fathers. We think we do, but we don’t.
‘For God’s sake, sir,’ Cat said, closing the knife and pushing it across the table towards me. ‘Throw it in the river and be done with it.’
After Cat had gone, I stayed in my chair with the box of my father’s pitifully few possessions before me. The afternoon passed slowly. I tried not to think about laudanum. Margaret came to clear the table. I shouted at her, and she went away. Two flies buzzed among the remains of our dinner. Something scratched behind the wainscot.
Had I ever really known Nathaniel Marwood? I used to think so. First there had been the giant of my childhood, the next best thing to God, whose word was law and whose powers were limitless. When I was young, I had never entertained the idea that my father, or indeed his God, might be wrong. My father could be stern, even cruel – I bore scars on my back to attest to that – and he had often been as tyrannical and capricious as Jehovah. When he had seen sin in me, or in anyone else, he had been savage in his efforts to root it out, whatever the cost to the sinner.
Then came the broken man who had emerged from prison last year, drifting through his second childhood towards its inevitable end. During the years of his imprisonment our roles had imperceptibly reversed themselves, and it had become my duty to care for him. He had seemed greatly softened by his tribulations – almost a different man, capable of a sweetness I had never known before. At the same time, he had been a burden. He had irritated me. But I had loved him. I mourned his passing.
But a few threads of yellow silk changed all that, together with the shower of rust spots, dried blood. Yellow as the sun, red as fire …
Now, for the first time, I realized there had been no division between the two men in the same body, between the tyrant of my childhood and the gentle, decayed fool of his last years. When my father had stumbled into Gromwell’s chamber, he had found sin in the person of Mistress Hampney, waiting for her lover, displayed on a couch in all her lewdness.
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