The instructions he’d received had been clear. The money was to be polished, and to a figure of his choice. Ashby gritted his chattering teeth against the death chill of December. A perishing month if you suffered, as he did. But still, press on, he thought, press on.
‘Is anybody there?’ hissed Ashby.
No answer came, but Ashby could hear a faint scratching sound so he carried on down what he thought must be a narrow hall, feeling his way like a mole with hands against the walls. The scurrying seemed to be ahead. And whispers? Yes, whispering. And a whirring sound and click, click, click and a clack, clack, clack.
The clacking sounds grew louder as Ashby stumbled his way on through the winding passage until he saw a chink of furtive light, a thin shard, nothing more. Pushing against what Ashby felt must be a door, he stepped inside a room stuffed to the brim with a myriad of colours. The peacock splendour of it all whirled around him in iridescent flashes, as the whispering and the clacking grew louder. Ashby had never seen anything like it before in his drab little life, but he’d read of these places in books which he’d devoured as a boy. Like some Indian bazaar or Egyptian palace, this room was exotica. He found his voice. ‘Are you there, Madame Martineau? It’s Ashby.’
Stepping into the storeroom, a figure in black stood silently for what felt like an age, before answering him in the faintest of accents, ‘I was expecting you at least an hour ago. Have you got my money?’
Madame Martineau arched a black brow, questioning. Her jet hair almost entirely hidden by a white cap, etched either side with cascading ribbons. Her dark eyes staring, unblinking, and nestled under long, thick lashes. In one hand she held a sharp pair of scissors. In the other hand, nothing.
‘I decided on a single payment of ten guineas. It’s all here, Madame. Please check if you like.’
‘Indeed, Ashby, I shall if I like. The figure you have selected seems appropriate and I see you have polished the guineas. Well done!’ And she laughed as she took the coins from his hands.
‘So, Madame. Where are these letters you promised me?’
‘You shall have them, but come, Mr Ashby. Follow me. I need to rest a little. I’m not my usual self.’
The sylphlike woman turned her back on the scribe, swishing her skirt behind her, and Ashby followed, meek as a lamb. At a series of long trestle tables sat a bevy of girls, heads down, hands busy at work. None looked up, because they feared their mistress, but Ashby knew now where the whispering and whirring came from. Each girl was sewing or cutting. One dark creature with bony shoulders sat hunched over a strange contraption, her little foot pumping up and down. Ashby spied what he thought must be a needle, winking silver, which bounced up and down on violet brocade. The other girls stitched by hand, as high fashion demanded. The faces of the girls, though lowered, looked little more than children.
‘This way,’ commanded the dressmaker, ushering Ashby into a tiny side room decorated with an elaborate collage in the shape of dragonfly wings splayed across the wall. Madame Martineau had partitioned this place off from her workforce to create a kind of boudoir.
‘Please, monsieur. I shall count the money, if you don’t mind. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I have plans to spend this tomorrow. Perhaps I can offer you some coffee?’
Ashby hid his astonishment at her inappropriate politeness but he obeyed and sat down on a chair. It was midnight. He was tired. He wanted the letters, not coffee. He could feel a wave of irritation rising in his gut. Press on, woman, press on.
But when not in the servitude of others, Madame Martineau took her time, and she sat down opposite him with a smile, placing her scissors down on a table. Although not one normally to notice such things, Ashby was struck by her beauty.
‘You have honoured our agreement, which is good, because I place great sway by it.’ She sat back, rubbing her flank. ‘I have been ill this past week, as women often are, but unlike the ladies we stitch for, there’s no lounging on cushions for working girls. Even now in such a state of nerves, I must work through the night for my customers. They make such demands, but miss an order? Never.’ She poured a whisky, creasing her eyes in pain. ‘At least sixteen gowns to be delivered by dawn. These ladies know no bounds. The flimflam of the fashion world, monsieur.’
She leant forward and poured herself a coffee, then passed another one to Ashby. Neither tasting the drink nor rejecting it, he pleaded, ‘You know it’s not coffee I’ve come for. The letters please, Madame, which you say are so very delicate. I must make haste. It’s already midnight and I must rise early tomorrow.’
Madame Martineau stood up, flattening her dress as she did, and reaching up high to a shelf, took down a neat bundle of letters which were tied with a bright-blue ribbon. The paper was flesh-coloured, flocked, and with a highly distinctive monogram shot through with gold, like a crest. The monogram said simply, ‘M’, but the pattern it made on the paper wasn’t simple at all. The monogram was voluptuous in its curves, almost Romanesque in its ambitions. Ashby paled because he recognised the paper at once. It was the Duke’s personal notepaper, of that there was no doubt.
‘You know, monsieur, I run a number of other services which many of the parliamentarians are only too pleased to use. Perhaps you, too, sir, have needs? You only have to say the word.’ Her pause was complacent as she sat down again. Ashby watched the letters still clutched to her bosom. She leant over and took a little nub of sealing wax she kept on a table, along with stamps and string, and rolled it between her finger and thumb, as if a lady of leisure.
‘Despite our best endeavours, it’s strange how little things can unsettle a man, and it’s these unsettling things that I, or for that matter any of my girls, can soothe away, and I offer variety.’ She attempted a smile, but it was barely that.
Ashby thrust out his hand. ‘The letters are all that’s required, madam, I can assure you.’
‘No matter, old man. Calm yourself, for you have grown quite pale. As I said, I never let a customer down.’ She laughed and held out the little bundle for the old man to take, and as he leant forward, she snatched it back.
‘Not so fast, monsieur, pretty please and you shall have them. Indeed, you are a clerk,
n’est ce pas
? A little bow would be nice.’
Ashby stood up, slammed the coffee cup down, which went crashing off the tray, and wrenched the letters from her.
‘Why, monsieur.’ Madame Martineau tilted her head to the side with a pout. ‘Why so rough? You had only to ask,
et voilà
!’
That does it, impudent, insufferable wretch, he thought. Leaping off the chair, he thrust his bony face close to her dewy skin and hissed in her ear, ‘Go easy, Madame. Go easy with your hateful taunts and your foul, unnatural suggestions. I need nothing more from you. You breathe a word of this to the Duke, a word, I say. You have no understanding of anything, do you? We have order here, madam, not anarchy. Another word, I say …’
‘Or you’ll what? You think you know who I am? Where I come from? What drives me? I’m not some silly English girl come up from the country. I know more than you think.’ Her face flashed with anger as she grabbed the old man’s wrist and twisted his arm up behind his back. Ashby heard himself yelp, but she kept twisting, her voice no longer quiet. ‘You’ve got what you came for, and I promise, when you read them, you won’t be disappointed.’ She twisted his bony arm a little further. ‘Now, monsieur, I’ve grown tired of your doglike company and would ask you to leave.’
She let go of his wrist. Ashby felt sick. His arm was searing.
He stumbled out of her room, and as he did heard her calling after him, ‘And don’t think this is the end, old man. Ten guineas is just the beginning.’
Rubbing his wrist, he stumbled past the dressmakers, the folds of silk, back through the darkened hall till he found himself breathless, out in the cold, her words banging against his temples. Not the end of this? He tottered on the ice a little, his arm limp and heavy. His writing arm. Damn that whore. Damn her to hell. Flickers fell about him. Rats scuttled in front of his way. Stumbling on through the stinking allies and narrow lanes, he pounded through the snow, mentally shaking off the weakness he had displayed to that, that
magaziniere
, that mantuamaker. Isn’t that what they called themselves?
Ashby wound his way round passages and corners, lit by the moon, and then up into Bermondsey Street. Far behind him, the great chimer of St Saviour’s struck one. At a pace, crossing Tyers Gate into Leathermarket Street. Home.
The street where he lived stunk of cabbages. Debris belched out and discarded by the market traders, whose stalls stood like miniature shipwrecks, half erected, half taken down. Night creatures picked over the frosted scrapings of carrots, skins of onions. Ashby shuddered. The wind was up and sending great flurries of icy flakes into his eyes, blinding him to this poverty, this human flotsam, and still he pressed on. At the end of Leathermarket Street, the clerk opened a door and climbed up the stairs.
No Mrs Ashby or any children, as such. But the clerk often thought there were. And so he said his hellos to his wife and the little ones, and patted them on the head saying, ‘Oh yes. I’ve had a regular day of it, Mrs A. How’s the baby? He don’t look too well. Wrap him up, woman. It’s perishing outside. And little Johnny? Reading already? Just like his father, eh? A right little scholar. Well, my sweet, I’m somewhat exhausted so I must be to bed. I’ve an early start in the morning.’
And so Ashby, alone in his bachelor’s lodgings, kissed good night to his armchair and patted his table on the head. He hugged the old pillow and after chatting away to his rickety wardrobe, peeled off his snow-clad coat. Lighting the grate, he stared at the flames.
The room was bare of ornament save one picture and a fine rosewood cabinet. The cabinet had been his mother’s and had come, like the picture on the wall, from a fine house, far away and long ago. A gift from her employees on starting a new situation in London. It was, he believed, what an auction house would call a secretaire. In the top drawer the clerk kept some odd cutlery, a sharpened knife for fruit peeling, a nut cracker. In the other drawers, all manner of things.
Opening the top, he took out the knife and cut open an orange with the precision of a surgeon. The flesh tasted sweet and refreshing. He nibbled on a crust of dry bread and, supper finished, got into bed. Despite his exhaustion, Ashby took up the letters, untying the bright-blue ribbon.
The flesh-coloured paper had an odd scent, which was rank like the workhouse. On some pages the writing was small and ill-formed. Just a few pages, he thought, to see what they said. Her words had suggested a sensation and the ‘M’ taunted him even more than her words. What had she said? Oh yes, ‘An upsetting of the apple cart, Mr Ashby, and the end of your world. It’ll be the workhouse for you, unless you pay me the money.’
The inked words blurred across the sheets. They rushed around his head. A great, single tear lolled down his face and he mumbled something about ‘God’ and ‘God’s mercy’. He pulled a worn blanket over his head, shut his eyes, and eventually, fitfully, the old man slept.
Madame Martineau counted her money again. It was barely worth bothering with, but she opened the box anyway, which was decorated with pearly blossoms and butterflies flitting about in jewelled colours. She sat down and shifted her dress a little, unfastening the hooks at the waist, the pain in her pelvis like a vice. Old wives said she needed to rest at this time of the month, but she instead found the tiny pots of herbs she kept for her girls, the older ones, which if she doubled the dose would do the trick for her as well. She could feel swelling at her temples again, the headache gathering a storm.
She measured out the salicene, two drops of laudanum, and the rest a mixture of dried-out, sage-coloured dust steeped in hot water. Ten minutes she would give it, but when the moment passed, still the gnaw in her belly. She picked up a little hand mirror and looked at herself. Yes, she was drawn. By the pressure of it all? Perhaps, or the passing of another unborn. She hated anything leaving her, but mostly it was the girls, and she forbade it. There were lines around her mouth but they were fine. She hauled her frame up and wrapped her coat around herself, and on top of that, a fur-lined shawl. She found a muffler and an outdoor hat. She chose black bombazine framed with red-dyed rabbit.
Then, she went into the sewing room and spoke sharply to the girls. None looked up. She told the tawny one at the machine, ‘Hide that colour from me. You know I detest it. Why must the ladies insist on purple? It’s a reminder. Cover it.’ The sallow little girl knew a bit of what madam said and why, and so splayed her hand across it realising the colour was a reminder of treachery, because the colour wasn’t strictly purple at all. It was violet.
‘I’ll be back at dawn,’ Madame Martineau said. ‘Make sure you are finished by then, because I’ll want to pack the gowns myself. My ladies like the personal touch, and as for the gentlemen …’ She looked at the girls and her eyes fell on a little one. ‘Yes, you girl. Tabitha, I think he likes to call you. There’ll be a job for you and I tomorrow.’
None of the girls asked her where she was going, because these night saunters were not uncommon.
So Madam Martineau left The Borough, cutting through the skeletal dockyards and iced jetties. The freezing air was doing the trick and she felt better for the movement. If she hurried, she could find a little skiff before the clock struck two. Spectre-like, she wheeled down to the portside where she heard men hollering and the sound of creaking ropes. She found a solitary boatman and gave him a shilling and told him, ‘Put your back into it, sir.’ But if truth were known, she was not in a hurry, and despite the aching damp of the timber, she let the river envelope her.
The boat was lit by a single lamp and cracked through the ice. She listened to the sound of the melting underneath her and felt the pull of the oar and let her head tilt a little onto the ruff which she had made into a pillow, recalling the old looms of Spitalfields, long fallen still. Her family dead and gone. To the wall, they called it. But she could remember her life before she was this. Hanging silks on tenterhooks and her love of bright colours which had stayed with her. A picture book of memories of the fields beyond the slums where they pegged out the yarns, the colours flapping like spun gold, the flags of some ancient emperor’s palace. But then the ice water sprinkled her from the tip of an overeager oar and the boatman said, ‘Sorry Miss,’ and the shock of it woke her.