‘Ooh, what colour’s your gown going to be?’ called Pegeen from behind.
‘Don’t know yet. I fancy something sprigged. Maybes a blue, or a lavender.’
The girls giggled and chatted, swinging their bundles as they tramped down the street, pausing to let the surge of people pass or to look in shopfronts as they went.
Behind them Mercy kept just out of sight, under the overhangs where the snow was thinnest, nipping into doorways when the girls paused, or crossing the road, her head down. She was dressed in a nondescript navy blue woollen bonnet and dark blue cloak lined with rabbit fur. Her eyes were fixed on Corey. The humiliation of her shorn hair had rankled deep. She had a mind to follow Corey and see if she could find a place where she might ambush her and take her revenge. Her brother Jacob had been outraged and had vowed to shear that Corey Johnson good and proper in return if she could find them a good place to lie in wait.
Corey was oblivious to Mercy. She carried on blithely, a wool scarf wrapped tightly over her head and ears, unaware she was being followed. At the corner she said goodbye to Betsy and Alyson with a ‘see you tomorrow’ and headed for home. Her feet found the driest places to walk as she threaded her way through the other passers-by, all keeping under the eaves away from the snow in the middle of the road. Everywhere was the noise of shovels scraping as folk cleared the paths. Mercy followed at a distance, keeping Corey’s head within her sights.
Corey was thinking. It had bothered her, the strange business with the woman in the house by the river. The woman had said she couldn’t be Corey Johnson because Corey Johnson lived upstairs. At first she had thought the woman must be touched in the head, but then Corey lay awake in bed at night, worrying at it, like a dog with a bone, and the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that the other ‘Corey Johnson’ must be Sadie or Ella. Simon Reed had said he’d seen a girl with a patch on her face looking out of that house. It was just too much of a coincidence. God knows why they had chosen her name. She was vaguely affronted by it, that one of them should be masquerading as her, but then again, what would she do, if the word was out for her and there was a noose waiting. She shivered. It had been preying on her mind; she had to find out if it was them.
She stopped dead. She would be late for making the supper, but she would go there now and see if she could get in and knock at the room upstairs. The snow had stopped, it was only a step away. She swivelled round and began walking hurriedly back the way she had come. She did not see Mercy, pressed flat against the side wall of a ginnel as she hastened by.
Corey made her way back to the house by Old Swan Stairs, and by the time she got there it was full dark. Snow glistened in the alley as if the world was glazed with white sugar. There was no light at the upstairs window. Corey went to the front and tried the door. It was open. She shook her ankles to rid her shoes of snow and went in, leaving the door ajar so that she might have a little light. She looked up the stairs. It was so quiet she could hear herself breathing. She began to climb the creaking stairs, feeling her way up, for it was pitch dark, and she had no candle.
Mercy watched Corey go inside before following her. She pushed on the front door gently with her index finger; it swung open a little further. She put her head round the edge of the door and listened. She heard Corey’s footsteps on the stairs, and then her voice calling, ‘Sadie? Ella? Are you there?’
There was no answer. Mercy heard the creak of a door, then Corey’s footsteps in a room above. The footsteps returned to the top of the stairs and Mercy prepared to run. A loud knock, and Corey’s voice again, on the landing. ‘Sadie? Are you in there? Ella?’ Then a rattling noise of metal on metal. A pause and then descending footsteps.
Mercy did not wait for Corey to get to the bottom of the stairs. She was already running, down the alley towards the centre of the city to tell Jacob. She’d need someone to go with her to the Blue Ball on Aldergate.
Fewer people were abroad because of the snowfall, but Sadie cursed the way the white carpet threw up the light and made every step a trudge. She looked from side to side, in case a footpad or mugger should set upon her, or in case someone should recognize her. Corey’s words came back to her, to keep only to well-lit streets and never to venture alone into the narrow back alleys of the city after dark. She kept her head down, ignoring the drunks spilling out surprised from the tavern, and the shivering beggars rattling their skews.
She wasn’t exactly sure of the way to the Gilded Lily but she remembered snippets of information Ella had given her about how it backed onto the river, and that it was off Broken Wharf, in Friargate where the old monastery used to be. In one way she dreaded finding Ella there because that would mean she had abandoned her on purpose. But she dreaded even more that she had been taken by Ibbetson or the constable.
Several times she thought she was lost, but dare not ask anybody the way. She kept close to the Thames. This part of the river was silent and still now except for the birds tiptoeing across its glassy surface, but further down she heard sounds of revelling, and the glow of lights from the Frost Fair appeared briefly before disappearing behind the buildings. She watched the street signs more closely, hoping to see one with a monk or a friar. When she came to a dark crossroads with several winding passageways leading off, deep in snow, she almost wept with frustration. Now where? she thought.
She followed her instinct and turned down past a short row of run-down wooden dwellings and pens of sows and chickens, until she emerged at the end of a broader street. She looked to her right – there it was, the sign of the monk in the alley. Friargate. This was it. She braced herself and headed down the road. The snow had stopped now, and her feet made whumping noises as she walked. To her right she spied the weathercock with its three brass coins, above a wide entrance, barred by a pair of heavy padlocked gates. Next to it was a smaller door in the fence.
My, it’s a lot grander than Ella told me, Sadie thought. She stared at the high stone walls with their elaborate gateposts flanking the carriage entrance. The road was clear of snow here as if many carriages came and went, but each gatepost was topped by a massive stone ball iced with white. Further down the road, the wall changed into stout planked fencing, taller than a man and cut into points.
She was astonished at the scale of it. Though she knew it was a monastery once, then a milkman’s yard, she wasn’t expecting anything nearly so large. How on earth would she know where Ella was? She recalled Ella’s words, that the Gilded Lily was what used to be the dairy behind the big warehouse. She peered across the yard. There was smoke coming from three chimneys, grey plumes in the night sky. One of the buildings seemed to have a candle burning in the upper room, the others were dark. She’d try the lit one first, see if she could get a glimpse of Ella. She saw straight away that the main gates to the yard were shut, and the best bet was in through the side door. It could be locked at night though, she thought.
She pushed at it, but it was solid wood bolted from the back and would not give. As she had predicted, it was locked from the inside. Sadie crept down the street to peer through the fence. As she leaned on the fence, her hand felt one of the planks give a little. She tugged at it; it was broken where it was nailed onto the supports. It made a splintering sound as she wrenched it away, leaving a narrow gap – a space barely big enough for a fox.
Sadie wriggled her way through, catching her skirt on a nail as she did so. She heard the fabric rip.
‘Damn,’ she said.
From nowhere a dog appeared in front of her – an explosion of barking and snarling. In the dark its eyes and jowls glistened. The dog was squat but powerful, all jaws and no tail. When it barked, saliva dripped from its mouth. Sadie clung to her skirts and backed away towards the fence.
The dog bounded forward, feet leaving black tracks in the snow. It was still barking, staccato grunts interspersed with growls from deep in its throat. From somewhere on their left, another huge dog tore round the corner of the warehouse in a frenzy of bark
ing. She froze with fear. The dogs seemed to sense they had the better of her and the smaller one leapt towards her. Sadie reached blindly behind her and pulled out the plank, still stuck with nails. With a swipe she felled the dog with a blow to the head. It yelped and struggled to its feet, but retreated a little, more wary now.
The other, bigger dog was approaching from the side, growling all the while. With a lurch, it snapped at her hand. She felt the teeth cut through her skin, but she swung the plank back hard, the edge of it cutting a blow across the dog’s cheek. It was not deterred and launched into another attack.
Sadie held the plank out in front of her to keep the dog’s jaws at bay. She felt the tug as the teeth clamped onto the wood, and she tussled with it knowing that the dog’s instincts would make it cling on.
The other dog kept up its frenzied barking. The yard burst into activity. The darkness bobbed with lanterns and running figures. At an upstairs window another candle appeared.
Sadie heard boots running and a gruff voice yell, ‘Down, Jovis!’ The dog on the other end of the plank cocked its ears but carried on growling. ‘Down, boy,’ said the voice again.
The dog let go of the plank to turn and look, and in that moment Sadie hurled herself back through the gap in the fence.
She ran pell-mell up the alley. Behind her the smaller dog had followed her through the fence and was barking, unsure whether or not to leave its territory. She ran faster, struggling through the snow, for she could hear men shouting, the barking of the dogs and the clank of the gates being unlocked, and the cursing and scraping as they tried to open them. She threw herself into the dark back streets, back to the shanty houses with their chicken sheds and pigsties, where the roofs were so close they had shielded the ground from the snow and underfoot was a brown mess of mud.
She panted as she ran, looking for somewhere to hide, then she dodged silently into a shabby yard and the nearest chicken house. The birds were roosting and made barely a cluck as she squashed inside and closed the door. The inside of the hut was warm and dusty, smelling of cornmeal and feathers. The barking was getting nearer. She gripped tight to the door, her fingernails in the wood. She tried to quiet her breath, motionless, listening to the sounds outside.
The growling and barking got louder until the chickens squawked and clucked and shifted uneasily on the roost. ‘Up here,’ someone shouted. The noise of the dogs baying was terrifying now and the birds panicked at the sound. They fluttered and screeched inside the hen hut, so that it became hard to hear what was going on outside. A woman’s voice cut through the noise.
‘What do you think you’re about? Letting your dogs worry my hens at this time of night. Be off with you.’
‘We’re from Whitgift’s. We’re after an intruder. You seen anything?’
The dogs were still growling and letting out the occasional bark. Sadie could hear them snuffling round the door of the hen house.
‘No,’ said the woman. ‘I was abed, like all good folk. Get your mangy dogs away. I’ll be putting in a complaint to Walt Whitgift if them dogs worry my hens again.’
‘Stupid dogs,’ said a man’s voice. ‘They smelt a chicken supper, that’s all. The intruder’s long gone. Come on. Get the rope on ’em and let’s get back to the yard.’
Sadie heard the thwack of a stick and then whining and growling as the dogs were tied up and dragged away. Inside the hut the hens settled back onto the roost, preening their ruffled feathers. When it fell silent, Sadie waited a good while, until the moon was set, before gingerly feeling her way towards the door, speaking softly to the chickens under her breath as she did so. They squawked and flapped their wings. She was about to open the door when it swung open to reveal a woman with a nightcap jammed over her dishevelled hair and a lantern in her hand. The woman’s mouth fell open and her eyes widened.
Sadie did not wait for her to speak, but pushed past her, her head down. ‘Now just you hold your—’ The woman lunged to try to catch hold as she passed, but she twitched her shawl out of the woman’s grasp and stumbled up the road. The woman seemed too surprised to follow.
A little further up the street she paused for breath. It was clear she could not get into Whitgift’s at night, not with those dogs. What on earth was she to do now? She couldn’t get in back home, she’d no key. She leaned back against a wall, her legs felt unsteady. There were drips of blood in the snow.
She held up her wrist and saw a gash that was steadily dripping. She held her sleeve to it with the other hand and pressed down. She couldn’t stay out here all night. She had suddenly started to feel very cold. Her teeth were chattering. She would not last the night out here, she’d have to find a place indoors.
She hoped Corey was in, and would let her bed down there for the night. It was a risk – her mother might want to claim the reward – but it was all she could think of.
Chapter 34
‘Let’s look.’ Corey took her hand. ‘It’s bad, that. Here, let’s tie it up with this.’ She tied a kerchief round Sadie’s torn wrist and knotted it tight. ‘You daft ’a’porth. What were you doing, going in Whitgift’s at night?’
‘I know. It were them dogs. One of ’em nipped me before I could get out of the way.’
‘Everyone knows not to go near it nights.’
‘It’s a bit of a tale. I was looking for Ella. She lives in at Whitgift’s now. She’s changed her name.’ Sadie paused.
‘It’s my name, isn’t it?’
‘Sorry, Corey. Nobody there knows who she is.’
‘Cheek of it,’ Corey said.
A moment’s silence.
‘I wondered if . . . I mean, I can’t go back home . . .’
‘I know. I went to find you at your lodgings after work, but there was a big lock on the door, and a hole like someone was trying to break in.’
‘That was me trying to get out. I got locked in. And now I’m locked out.’
‘It’s all right. You can bunk in with me. But won’t Ella be worried?’
‘It’s safer when we’re separate, she says. But, Corey, something must have happened. I haven’t seen her for days. She wouldn’t just abandon me. She said we’d always stick together.’ She could barely get the words out. ‘She did. She promised me.’
‘She’ll be safe somewhere, you’ll see. I can’t make sense of all this. Tell me it proper, from the beginning.’
So Sadie told her everything. Corey frowned and listened, interspersed with, ‘Well, I never did,’ and ‘You don’t say.’
When she got to the end of her tale, Sadie said, ‘So I’ve got to go back, to see what’s happened to Ella.’
‘No,’ said Corey. ‘You can’t go in at night. Not with them dogs. Promise me you won’t go back there.’
Sadie pressed her lips together in stubborn silence.
‘Go back in the morning when the yard’s open.’
‘I’ve got to find out where she is. And I can’t go when it’s light. I’m too easy to get a fix on.’
‘I know. But Whitgift’s is the first place to look. No point in doing anything until we know she’s not there. Tell you what, how’s about I go in soon as it’s open, ask after her, like.’
‘Sorry, Corey, I didn’t mean to get you involved in it all.’
‘What else are friends for? I’ll go first thing in the morning, soon as they’re open and they’ve tied up the dogs.’
‘What will your mother make of it? Me staying here?’
‘Naught. She’s working nights. Don’t get back till four then she sleeps in. So long as the littlies are fed she won’t know. They’re asleep now in her bed.’
Sadie patted Corey’s arm. ‘Thanks, Corey.’
‘Bloody Ella. She wants slapping. And I can’t believe you jumped out of that window. It’s a massive drop to the river. And fancy you fighting them dogs.’
‘It wasn’t anything. I was scared witless.’
‘I used to think you were a bit quiet, you know. Always in Ella’s shadow. Thought you’
d not say boo to a goose. But breaking into Whitgift’s – everyone knows it’s set like a man-trap at night with them dogs. That’s bold, that is. Just shows – appearances can be deceiving.’
‘We never did those things, you know.’
Corey squeezed her arm. ‘What things?’
Sadie dropped her gaze.
‘I know,’ Corey said.
Corey had fed her hot soup and bread and whey, and now Sadie was tucked in the bed in the garret next to Corey, top to tail. Nevertheless she hardly slept. She worried in case Corey’s brothers woke and made a fuss. And her thoughts ran back to Ella, imagining her locked in some dark cell, or that she’d had an accident and there was nobody to help her. She turned over again, wincing as the spoon put pressure on her torn wrist. Corey had replaced the kerchief with another piece of torn muslin and twisted a wooden spoon in it as a tourniquet, but all night the blood continued to seep through. Dreams came, but they were confused and vague. By the morning the muslin was bright red, there was a wet patch of blood on her skirt and Sadie felt alternately nauseous and faint. When the light came, she sat up shakily and touched Corey’s shoulder.
‘I’m worried about Ella,’ she whispered. ‘Sun’s up.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Don’t know. But it’s light and I heard the cocks going. Whitgift’s will be opening soon.’
Corey sat up and rubbed her eyes and forehead. ‘Oh, Sadie, there’s blood on your skirt.’
Sadie felt the dull red patch with her fingers.
‘That needs stitching,’ Corey said, seeing her grey face. ‘We’ll have to go down to the barber-surgeon’s.’
‘No. He might have seen the notices.’
‘You’ll have to. I’ll not go to Whitgift’s for you this morning unless you go to the surgeon’s first.’
‘But you promised—’
‘Only kidding. Course I’m going. Get up, let’s get you to the surgeon’s.’
The Gilded Lily Page 33