The Ashes of London (42 page)

‘And you? Where do you stand?’

‘I think we must let bygones be bygones. The old days have passed. Times have changed, and we must change with them.’

‘Some people never change,’ he said wearily. ‘They are hard as rock.’

‘And Mistress Lovett? Is she as hard as rock as well?’

Then, at long last, Hakesby abandoned the pretence. ‘She’s not like her father, and I doubt that she shares his beliefs. Though she has some of his gifts. But what is she to you? Why should you care what happens to her? Why should it matter to you if she lives or dies?’

‘Her Aunt Alderley asked me to find her and bring her home. She cares for the girl and will not let her come to harm. And she has powerful friends of her own, quite apart from her husband.’

‘Are you a government spy?’

‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘I work as a clerk in Master Williamson’s office. I help him conduct the
Gazette.
’

‘So you dance to the government’s tune, Master Marwood?’

‘No, sir. I work to live. My father is failing. I must put food on the table for us, and find a roof for our heads.’

Hakesby stirred in his chair. ‘Doesn’t a daughter belong with her father?’

‘Not this daughter. And not this father.’ I leaned forward. ‘Sir, I don’t know what Master Lovett was, but I know what he has become. In the last few weeks he has murdered at least three men, including one of Master Alderley’s manservants, who was spying on him, and one of his own former comrades, a man named Sneyd.’

‘Sneyd? The tailor. I knew him – he made a coat for me once, in Oliver’s time.’

‘They found him last month in the Fleet Ditch.’

‘Drowned?’

‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘He was stabbed in the brain by someone who knew what he was doing. The manservant was killed in exactly the same way. And, in both cases, the thumbs of the dead man had been tied together.’

Hakesby’s face changed. Fear had touched him. ‘You said he’s killed three men. Who was the third?’

‘Sir Denzil Croughton, last Saturday. He was betrothed to Mistress Lovett.’

‘The man who was stabbed on Primrose Hill? You’re raving.’

‘Does it sound as if I’m the one who’s raving?’ I stood up and looked down at him. ‘Three men murdered, and who knows how many others have died because of this? Lovett was also behind the Whitehall fire last week. God knows what else he intends.’

Hakesby lifted his arms, clasped his long bony fingers together and laid his hands on his lap. ‘I fear for her.’

I bent towards him and said in a low voice, ‘I wish Mistress Lovett nothing but good. But don’t you see? If she’s with him now, he will drag her down with him. So if you know where she is, can we not help her?’

C
AT PUSHED ASIDE
the coverings and slowly stood up. Her fingers wrapped around the handle of the knife. She drew it from its sheath.

The light on the floor increased in size. The door was silently opening. Glowing lines appeared at the top, the bottom and one side of the door, narrow at first but gradually widening into slabs of colour. The light was not bright. She guessed it came from another closed lantern.

She backed into the corner. Her mouth was dry. It was too late to hide. Only the wall cupboard was large enough to conceal her, but that was directly opposite the opening door and she hadn’t time to reach it, let alone to reach it without making a noise.

She took a step along the wall to the right. Then another. The movement brought the opening door at least partly between her and whoever was on the other side of it.

She heard a shuffling, faint as a whisper. Attack was the only course left to her. Go for his eyes, she thought, remembering Cousin Edward, or his manhood. Or both.

Her foot touched the jug, which still contained a little beer. It slid, scraping, across the stone floor.

‘Catherine. Is that you?’

The whisper reached her through the not-quite darkness. Fear dropped away from her, replaced in that first moment by a stab of anger, sharp as her own knife.

How dare he?

‘Sir?’ she said.

The door swung open to its full extent. The dark shape of her father almost filled the doorway. She put the knife in its sheath and returned it to her pocket.

The anger diminished, and became a dull ache of despair, a sense that all roads led back to her father, that she would never escape him or the life he had chosen for them.

‘Why aren’t you where I left you?’ he said, almost pettishly.

‘I could not tolerate that house any longer, sir. But why are you here? Why are—’

‘You were at that house by my command,’ he said harshly. ‘You had no right to leave it. There’s no sin in honest work, only in refusing it.’

‘Master Davy is a lecher, sir.’ And a bully, and a hypocrite. ‘He kissed me and touched me where he should touch only his wife.’

‘Your wits are wandering, girl. Either that or you are lying.’

‘He threatened to whip me if I did not do what he wanted.’

‘You’re lying. Master Davy is a friend. He is one of us. I have known him for nigh on twenty years. I entrusted you to his care. He would never betray that trust. He would never do me such a wrong.’

‘He did me the wrong, sir,’ she spat. ‘Not you. And I tell you I will not stand for it. Not from any man. Ever.’

He took a step towards her. ‘You were always headstrong, Catherine.’ His voice was gentler, almost conciliatory. ‘Come. We will talk about this later. Perhaps there is something in what you say, but there’s no time to enquire into it now. The Chapter Clerk’s away, but others may come to the room.’

‘How did you know to find me here?’ She paused but all she heard was his breathing. ‘You saw me come? No, not that. You know about the Chapter Clerk.’

The knowledge that she had been betrayed swept over her. Something shifted in the relationship between her father and herself. Something was broken. No man could be trusted. Not even her father. Not even Master Hakesby.

‘Come,’ her father said again. ‘We will talk later.’

‘Where are we going?’ She didn’t want to go with him at all. But she didn’t want to stay in this place, either. ‘Can we leave St Paul’s?’

‘No. There’s no way out tonight. We must wait for the morning, for Master Davy and his wagon.’

‘I won’t go with him.’

He slapped her face, causing her to stagger and almost fall. ‘You will go where I tell you.’ He steadied her and his voice became gentler again. ‘We shall go up,’ he said. ‘We shall go higher, closer to God. It’s safer there, because once in a while the watchmen come into the church itself. Besides, there is something up there I must show you, and something I must do.’

Her father wasn’t mad, Cat decided, not if you knew his beliefs and started from those; given that, there was nothing foolish about him or his actions.

He insisted on returning everything in the chamber to where it had been when she had first come into it. He made her open the shutter and empty the pot and the beer jug out of the window into the darkness of the cloister garth below. The surplices and cassocks went back into the wall cupboard.

When she had finished, he checked the room, as carefully as he could by the poor light of the lantern. His movements were methodical and unhurried. She waited, shivering in her cloak, for him to finish. Only when he was quite satisfied that she had left no trace of her presence did he take her by the arm and draw her through the doorway.

The gallery on the other side stretched above the north walk of the cloister. Most of the roof had gone, and one of the stone window frames had collapsed outwards, taking with it some of the wall on either side of it.

‘It’s safe enough if you go carefully and stay to the left,’ her father said. ‘Keep hold of my arm.’

He put the bars across the door and drew her down the gallery to an archway. This led to another chamber that ran down to the corner of the cloister. Here, in the angle where the cathedral’s nave met the south transept, there was a small doorway. The door, blackened by the heat but still intact, was standing open.

The beam of the lantern played briefly and faintly on the spiral staircase beyond. The steps curled through the thickness of the wall into the darkness above.

Cat touched her father’s arm. ‘Sir? Must we go here?’ Neither high places nor darkness scared her. But she had a fear of being trapped, of being powerless.

‘Be not afraid,’ he commanded. ‘For I am with you.’

He pushed her ahead of him. She began to climb, stretching her arms so her hands could touch the wall on the left and the central post on the right. He closed the door behind them and followed, his footsteps steady and firm on the stone treads as if he were climbing in broad daylight.

The light danced around her, throwing her shadow ahead. A current of air rushed down towards them. Here, encased in the stone skeleton of the building, it was much colder even than in the chamber where she had tried to sleep.

‘Faster,’ he whispered behind her. ‘Higher.’

The staircase levelled out into a passage that ran between blank stone walls.

‘Quietly now,’ her father murmured behind her. ‘We’re at triforium level. Have no fear – the floor is sound and level. There’s another stair at the end.’

She felt his hand on her shoulder. He nudged her gently through the archway. She was calmer now, responding to the precision of his knowledge and the authority in his voice. The triforium was the middle storey of a church interior, the arcading above the aisles. She had her bearings now: somewhere to the left must be the central tower.

At the end was another spiral stair, at the top of which they entered what at first seemed like another passage. Cat had taken only a few steps along it when she realized that this passage was different. The air was fresher and more turbulent. There was suddenly a pallor to the darkness, a sense that it was not quite as deep as it had been. She stopped and stretched out her right hand. She touched the rough stone of the wall. She stretched out her left hand and touched—

Nothing.

‘Keep to the right,’ her father hissed at her shoulder. ‘Don’t look down. Walk.’

Her legs ached. She felt weak. She took a step forward. Then another. Her left hand brushed something. A pillar. Then nothing again.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Only a few paces.’

Her knees were somehow dissolving, the solid matter of bone and tendon losing form and density, becoming jelly. The light from the lantern flickered ahead, showing ash and stone and, to the left—

Nothing.

‘Look to the right, at the wall. Walk. In a moment you’ll be at the tower staircase.’

Again, knowledge steadied her. They were still inside the cathedral, but high above the crossing, with the central tower above them. A narrow passage with the wall on one side and the arches on the other, framing—

Nothing.

She was inside the empty heart of the tower. Somewhere far below this dark vacancy – eighty feet below? A hundred? – was the floor of the cathedral.

Then – a moment later? An hour? – an archway loomed before her. She stumbled through it and collapsed on the lower steps of the staircase beyond.

‘Put your faith in me, and the Lord our God, Catherine,’ her father said. ‘I’ve worked in this place since I was a boy. Your grandfather was a mason here too. I won’t let you fall.’

She felt a rush of love for him, its force taking her by surprise. Then loathing.

How could you
?

After that it was easier. Her legs still ached. She was still faint with hunger. But she climbed steadily, with him keeping pace behind her. This staircase was rising through the tower itself, she realized, near its south-east corner. There was a slit window at every few turns of the stair.

Once they were above the level of the choir, she caught glimpses of London below them, of a wasteland of ashes and ruins, speckled with the occasional fire, unimaginably far away. To the south was the broad black stripe of the river, with the boats passing to and fro, their lanterns bobbing on the water. Once she heard a dog barking.

Sometimes they passed empty doorways. Her father said they had once led to vanished chambers above the vaulting of the tower.

‘Not long now,’ he said. ‘Almost there.’

They came to a low doorway, not more than four feet high. It still had a door in it.

‘Let me go first,’ he said.

She stepped back, allowing him to push past her. He took out a key and, holding the lantern to the door, unlocked it and threw the door open.

There was a rush of air towards them, bringing the smell of the river. She heard a sound, a long, faint moan; a trick of the wind.

Master Lovett scrambled through the doorway. He turned back. ‘Come,’ he said impatiently. ‘Keep to the right, by the wall.’

She followed him outside. Above their heads was the sky, heavy and dark, with a handful of stars burning far beyond the clouds. She stood there for a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust to the light. The air was fresh and had a tang of salt. Apart from the buffeting of the wind it was almost silent. From the Tower in the east to the distant lights of Whitehall and Westminster in the west, the noise and bustle had dropped away. Cat had never been so high above London, not within the City itself.

Another moan. Not the wind. Something nearer.

‘I’ve a surprise for you, Catherine,’ her father said. He sounded almost merry. ‘Your Uncle Alderley is waiting to greet you.’

The moaning was close to her, little more than a hand’s reach from where she was standing, just outside the doorway from the stairs. She recoiled from the sound, jarring her spine against the stone of the parapet. Her hand flailed out, searching for support. It collided with her father’s arm. He gripped her wrist. She heard him exclaim.

Something small and metallic skittered across the stone ledge they were standing on.

Then – suddenly – there was silence again, except for the wind, a silence where there should not have been silence. All three of them – Cat, her father and Uncle Alderley – held their breath and waited, without knowing precisely what they were waiting for.