Her hand flew to her throat. ‘I don’t know nothing about that, sir, I—’
‘When I was there the first time,’ I said, ‘there was a desk in the drawing room.’
‘Yes, I told you,’ she said, suddenly loquacious. ‘That’s where His Grace sits. He likes to see who comes and goes in the yard below. He says it’s as good as a play sometimes, to see how they hesitate before they dare knock on the door, and how they count their money and how they spew in the gutter, and how their friends urge them on.’
‘And his papers?’
‘How would I know? He has the keys to the drawers of the desk. No one else has. Maybe he locks them in there. Maybe he takes them when he goes.’ Chloris paused and then added casually, ‘He fucked me over that desk once. The window was open. I had my head outside.’
I turned aside to take another mouthful. Then, ‘I want the contents of the drawers. Any papers, that is. How can I get them?’
‘Meg won’t get them for you. She wouldn’t dare. If you want them, you’ll have to get them yourself.’
I set down my knife. I had lost my appetite. ‘Suppose – just suppose – I did get them myself. How would I go about it?’
Chloris hesitated. ‘The best time would be early morning. We’re busy most of the night so we all rise late, including the men.’
‘Are you sure Meg wouldn’t fetch them for me?’
‘Why should she run the risk? She ain’t foolish like me. And she ain’t got twenty pounds off you already. Besides, they’d kill her if they found her at it. She knows that.’
After a while, I said, ‘If a window could be left open …’
She burst out laughing. ‘You like going in and out of windows, don’t you?’ She clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Forgive me, sir, it just slipped out.’ Then she frowned and the hand dropped away from her face. ‘But there might be a way, sir. It would cost you.’
It always does, I thought. One way or another.
When Chloris had cleared away my supper and left me, I took pen and ink and wrote a letter. The words did not come easily, but they had to be written. I finished at last, sanded the ink dry, folded the letter and wrote Mistress Hakesby on the outside.
I sealed it, feeling like a gambler who had just cast a pair of dice but does not yet know how they will fall. Had she gone willingly to Wallingford House yesterday evening? Or had Veal forced her to accompany him?
I shouted for Sam, who was lounging in the hall. Late though it was, I told him to send Margaret to me. He looked puzzled but he obeyed without a word. When Margaret appeared, she was wearing the shapeless gown she put on when she retired.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘I want you to take this letter to the sign of the Rose at about ten o’clock.’
‘Me?’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘But morning’s my busy time, master. Couldn’t Stephen go? Or Sam?’
‘No. It’s possible that the house is being watched by Mistress Hakesby’s enemies. And mine. They know Stephen is my servant, and Sam too. But they don’t know you.’
‘Could you send a boy? Sam could bring you the one from the alehouse.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want you. Someone I can trust. And someone she can trust.’
I waited but Margaret didn’t speak. She stood there, quite still, her eyes fixed on me, and her lower lip thrust out. Her very passivity was a wordless, red-faced objection.
‘It’s for Mistress Hakesby’s sake,’ I said at last. I felt a twinge of envy for the loyalty that Cat inspired so effortlessly in my servants. ‘Do it for her, Margaret, if not for me.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Rehearsal
Wednesday, 25 March 1668
THE KENNEL SHAKES and bangs. Windy’s scratching.
Ferrus crawls out to piss in the corner by the coal shed. So cold. Only piss is warm.
A clock strikes five. Clang clang. Others join in. Devil’s fire irons. Clang clang.
He thinks of the lady.
In the street that time, when Master was in Fulton’s and talking secrets to the grandpa man. Lady spoke kindly, but he was full of fear and ran away and hid. But he saw her later on his way back to Fulton’s and Master. Lady was walking through the big square full of people. Covent Garden, though nothing grows there. She went into a house in a street beyond.
Where lady lives?
Bolts rattle behind him. He turns. Master in the doorway to the passage. In his hand, a dogwhip. Face all blotchy. Body swaying. He swings the three knotted cords of the whip to and fro, to and fro.
Usually, when Master drinks hard, he falls asleep. But sometimes he drinks hard and does not sleep. Oh no, no, no.
‘Poxy idle bufflehead,’ Master says, nodding his head to agree with himself. ‘You cost me the King’s reward on Monday. You poxy pricklouse. You disgusted him, you disgust everyone, and that cost me a purse of gold. I’ll thrash your poxy hide to jelly. Teach you manners.’
Windy comes out of his kennel. He growls. Master veers away from him. He raises the whip and staggers towards Ferrus.
‘Come here,’ he says, ‘come here, you whoreson knave.’
Ferrus screams as the cords wrap themselves around his head in stripes of pain.
Windy’s chain rattles. He lunges at Master. But the chain isn’t long enough and it tugs him back.
This time the whip catches Ferrus on the neck and the arm. He tries to move away. But the wall stops him. Windy snarls and snaps.
Master laughs in the dog’s face. ‘Think you’re fierce? Why, I could tear you limb from limb.’
He brings down the whip on Windy, who cries out.
Oh Windy. Ferrus makes a wordless noise. He springs. Snatches whip from Master. Master stumbles. His mouth falls open.
Blood on Windy’s face. Oh, poor, poor Windy.
Ferrus brings down the whip on Master. Master stumbles again. Trips and falls. Windy seizes him by the ankle. Oh, Master screams and screams and screams.
The world in front of Ferrus is red. Master lies on the ground, curling up like a cat by the fire. Ferrus beats him with the whip about the head and body. Windy bites his leg.
Up goes the whip. Down goes the whip. Master shrieks. Master cries. Master screams.
Someone’s shouting from the scullery window. A bolt scrapes on the door.
Ferrus drops the whip. It falls on Master. Master whimpers. Master whines. Windy growls.
The shouting’s louder. Ferrus runs. Through the open door to the passage. With long strides he lopes through the gloom of early morning. His arms turn like windmill sails, pushing him along. At the servants’ door to the Park, he pulls back the bolts.
Into another world. Where the air holds its breath.
His face is wet. Wipes it with his hands. Red hands. He wipes them on his breeches. He runs, following the line of the canal.
A grey light fills the world. Slowly it becomes silvery.
I couldn’t have found the house without Chloris. The mouth of the alley that led to it was almost invisible.
The entry was on Long Acre, tucked in the shadow of a candlemaker’s establishment. It was not yet fully light, and the walls on either side were high. The path wound its way among a maze of buildings and yards.
Chloris took my arm. I was carrying a bundle of tools under my cloak as well as a stick. The plan had seemed rational yesterday evening, the only possible way out of our difficulties. Now it showed itself in its true colours as the wildest and most foolish scheme imaginable.
‘We’re nearly there,’ she said, squeezing my arm, as if I were a child in need of reassurance.
The entrance of the house was at the top of a flight of steps. There was a workshop underneath, its heavy double doors chained up. We climbed the steps. The sky growing lighter: above us was a grey day, streaked with smoke from scores of newly-lit fires. Chloris had stayed a few nights in this house when she was cast off by her master, before Ma Cresswell had found her and transformed her from a servant to a whore.
‘Best if
I do the talking.’ She squeezed my arm again. ‘On account of my knowing the way of things here.’ There was a flash of teeth as she grinned. ‘We’ll need your purse again, sir.’
She knocked on the door. No one came. She knocked again. I heard someone shouting. She tried a third time. A shutter on the door slid back.
‘What’s the racket?’ The voice was sharp and hard as a nail. ‘Oh, it’s you. Ain’t you with Ma Cresswell now?’
‘I left.’
‘She put you out, more like.’
‘I got a person of quality with me that’s mortal weary, mistress. Needs a bed to lay himself down on. And a chamber to himself, and me to look after him there. He likes it private.’
‘How long?’
‘To midday, let’s say.’
‘Five shillings.’
‘Five? What’s this? Somerset House?’
‘You want a room all to yourself, don’t you? That means someone’s got to go, don’t it? So: five shillings, take it or leave it.’
‘He’s got a fancy to have that little one at the top of the house. Right at the top.’
‘Why?’
‘Closer to heaven.’
‘Eight shillings then.’ There was a noise that might have been laughter or a creaking hinge. ‘If he wants heaven, he has to pay for it.’
Chloris prodded my side. ‘If you’d be so kind, sir. Cheap at the price, eh? We can’t wait, can we?’
She winked at me and slipped her arm around my waist. Her head was cooler than mine. I counted out the coins with difficulty, partly because of the gloom and partly because my fingers were trembling. Chloris scooped the money from my palm and handed it through the shutter. The shutter closed and we waited, shivering in the cold.
‘Are you sure she won’t take the money and leave us on the doorstep?’
‘Don’t worry, sir. You paid her eight shillings without a murmur. We don’t look like trouble, we spoke her fair. She’ll be hoping to get more from us before we’re done.’
A few minutes later, bolts slid back and the door opened. Inside was a narrow passage. In the gloom, a tall, stooping woman dressed in black stood with her back to the wall to let us by. She looked like an old crow. She held out a rushlight to Chloris.
‘Up the stairs as far as you can go. There’s a ladder to the attic.’ She ran her eyes over me. ‘Not too much in liquor, is he? If he is, you’ll have to get him up there yourself. And clean up if he spews.’
‘I’ll manage, mistress.’ Chloris took my hand. ‘Come, sir, let me lead you up to paradise.’
Crooked, slanting stairs climbed through the heart of the house, a wooden building grown crazy with age. The air stank like an alehouse privy. We passed closed doors and heard the sounds of other occupants, some sleeping, some not.
On the top landing, a man and a woman lay huddled together for warmth. Beside them was the ladder. The man muttered a curse as we passed, and I guessed we had caused their eviction.
Chloris climbed the ladder first and scrambled into the attic. I followed her into a narrow space. It was almost entirely filled by a low truckle bed covered with a stained and crumpled sheet. The atmosphere was fetid, as though all the smells below had risen over the years and concentrated their essence up here.
After the darkness of the stairs, the attic was unexpectedly light. The room was squeezed into the top of one of the house’s gables. On either side of the bed, the roof sloped down to the boarded floor. Of the two triangular vertical walls at either end, the inner one behind the bed consisted of a plank partition. The outer wall, however, was largely filled by a tall casement that looked if it might have been reused from another building.
I set down my bundle and stick, and threw open the window. Fresh, cold air flooded into the room, together with the smell of burning coal. Immediately in front of me, no more than a yard away, was another window. A piece of cloth made a makeshift curtain which obscured what lay within.
The upper storeys of both houses were jettied out to the point that the attics came close to touching one another. I looked down and then wished I hadn’t. Directly below was the alley that ran along the side of Madam Cresswell’s house in Dog and Bitch Yard. It was a long drop.
‘Meg sleeps in there, and me too.’ Chloris was standing at my shoulder, her breath warm on my cheek. ‘Unless a man pays to lie with us all night.’
I took my stick, poked it over the alley and tapped on the glass. I did it gently at first and then more vigorously. A dog barked in the distance.
‘Gently,’ Chloris whispered. ‘You’ll wake the house.’
There was a flutter of movement in the cloth over the window. I tapped once more, and withdrew the stick. The cloth vanished. A white-faced child was staring at me.
‘By your leave.’ Chloris pushed me aside and leaned out of the window. ‘Mary,’ she said, and mimed to her that she should open her window.
The child obeyed. As the casement swung open, I saw her clearly for the first time. I recognized her face.
‘Dorinda,’ I said, remembering the bruised arms of the third of the three whores whom Madam Cresswell had paraded before me.
‘Mary,’ Chloris corrected me. ‘That’s her true name.’ She looked at the girl. ‘Where’s Meg?’
‘Downstairs with Mr Durrell.’
That was a blow. Chloris had thought that Meg would be a useful ally. I had even wondered if I could bribe her to break into the desk while I waited here in relative safety.
‘Where have you been?’ Mary was saying. ‘What’s—’
‘What ails you, child?’ Chloris whispered. ‘You’re like a ghost. Why are you up in the attic?’
The white face trembled and crumpled. ‘I can’t keep anything down. I spewed over a gent yesterday. Ma Cresswell put me up here to keep me out of the way.’
‘Oh devil take her. Are you with child?’
Mary nodded. ‘She’s so angry. I never seen her like that. She told Merton to beat me. But it didn’t make it go away. It just made me puke over his shoes.’
‘God have mercy,’ I muttered, startled into something like prayer.
Chloris swore. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Open your window as wide as you can.’
‘But I didn’t think I was old enough yet,’ the girl wailed. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘Hush. I’m coming over to you. And this man is coming, too. But don’t worry, he won’t touch you. Is anyone out of bed yet?’
‘No – last night was late for everyone. Ma opened up for a private party. No one’s even gone down to light the kitchen fire.’
Chloris removed her shawl and tossed it on the unmade bed. She unclasped her cloak and dropped it on top. She scrambled on to the windowsill.
‘Stand back and give me room.’
With surprising grace, she wriggled out of the window. Clinging to the frame, she straightened herself. Then she stepped without hesitation on to the windowsill of the neighbouring attic. She ducked her head and clambered inside. She turned to me.
I passed her the bundle of tools.
‘Come on,’ she whispered.
I dropped my cloak and hat on the bed. I had not bothered with a peruke this morning. I climbed on to the windowsill. Clutching the mullion, I crouched there for a moment. A yard is nothing, the length of a man’s step. We lift our feet from one end of a yard to the other. It is an easy thing, and we do it thousands of times a day without a second thought. But it is different when you are twenty-five feet or more above the ground. A yard is a chasm. A yard is the mouth of a pit that sucks you into it. And I am a coward.
Mary was standing out of my sight, but I heard her thin, hopeless wail. I leaned across the gap and gripped Chloris’s outstretched arm by the wrist. Staring into her eyes as if I hoped to find salvation there, I stepped without a downward glance into Madam Cresswell’s house.
I found myself in another attic, slightly larger than the one I had left. I unwrapped the bundle. I picked out a pair of chisels, a hammer and a small crow, wh
ich I had taken from Sam’s box of tools. Unfortunately I had never acquired the art of picking a lock.
Mary’s eyes widened. ‘What are you about, sir?’
Chloris said, ‘Don’t worry, my love. We’ll be gone before you know it, and no one the wiser.’
Mary lunged at her and gripped her arm. ‘Take me with you,’ she whispered. ‘Please. Please.’
‘All right.’ Chloris’s eyes met mine over Mary’s head. ‘But me and the gentleman need to go downstairs for a moment first. Stay here. Get dressed.’
The house was larger than I had realized. Chloris took me past the attic where I had been confined and down a narrow flight of stairs. We came to a long passage with many doors opening into it. The next set of stairs was wider and with shallower treads. It brought us to the landing I had seen on my first visit to Dog and Bitch Yard. She tried the latch of the drawing-room door. It lifted, but the door was locked.
Putting her finger to her lips, she tiptoed to the neighbouring door. She stood on tiptoe and took a key from the ledge above the lintel. Slowly and stealthily, she inserted it in the lock and turned it. She gave me the sort of smile that is halfway to being a grimace. She raised the latch and the door opened.
We found ourselves in a shabby closet furnished with a table and a chair. The table was laden with trays of bottles and dirty glasses. From the closet, a communicating door led into the drawing room. I peered round the tall screen on the other side. The room was empty. The air was stuffy and smelled of sweat, candles and stale alcohol. There were more dirty glasses and empty bottles, including a smashed wine glass in the hearth. A pack of cards had been dropped on the carpet, where it lay in a ragged arc of pasteboard.
I crossed the floor to the desk by the window. I opened the curtains to give me light. The rattle of the rings was loud in the silence.
The desk was plain, with no ornamentation in the way of carving or inlays. It was flat-topped with two drawers beneath and a space for a man’s legs between them. I remembered with sudden distaste that Chloris had lain over it for the Duke’s pleasure with her head poking out of the window.
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