The square of sevens, p.13
The Square of Sevens, page 13
He gave me one of his stares.
He gives everybody stares.
Not like this.
A pair of lapdogs burst into the room, chasing one another, knocking over a sewing basket, upending a game of backgammon, scattering ivory and jade counters into the air. Nicholas mutters his irritation. Jemima gives chase, followed by Etta, her lady’s maid. In the ensuing distraction, Jago takes something from his pocket, holding it between his thumb and index finger. In the moment before he presses it to his lips, the little golden heart catches the light. He hands it to Luna, who smiles and slips it into her pocket. Turning slightly, she catches Lazarus watching her and swiftly looks away.
Not my business, he tells himself. Nobody challenges Jago’s place in this house and wins. To console himself, he takes George Montfort’s arguments apart, piece by piece.
Now, as Lazarus steps into the chill night air of Covent Garden, the Grandchild Codicil stowed snugly in his pocket, his mind lurches unbidden to Cornwall, to the fishing town named Tretelly. To the room in the inn on the clifftop, to the bloody carnage of the four-poster bed. Luna naked, her eyes glazed, his rising panic.
‘Where is he?’ he had demanded of the tap-girl who had shown him there. ‘Her husband. The fortune teller. Where is he?’ She only shrinks from him in speechless terror.
He asks the same question, moments later, of the innkeeper. ‘You need to speak to my head ostler,’ Chenoweth replies. ‘He saw it all.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Four of spades as master-card: affecting some near concern to the querist. It shall end less well than was hoped.
I COULD FEEL Death’s presence in that room. Sometimes he grinned at me from behind the bars of Mr Antrobus’s bed, or from the shadows next to the window, behind the curtain. Sometimes I glimpsed him leaning against a wall, sharpening his scythe. I wanted to snatch it from him and drive it through his skeletal ribs, smash his grinning skull to pieces.
Mr Antrobus never stirred any more. He was still, but I knew he was not at peace. I sat on his bed, consumed by anger, helplessness and guilt, until I heard the clatter of a coach drawing up outside. Rising and going to the window, I watched the guard dismount and open the door. Henry stepped out and greeted Mr Richardson, who had come out to take in the luggage.
It had been six days since I’d discovered the theft of the codicil. I knew immediately who had taken it. I thought of Henry’s search. His sudden trip to London. And yet how had he known where to find it?
I’d taken the codicil out of its hiding place to study the night before Henry’s departure. Could he have somehow seen me do it? I went from my bedroom into the hall, and knelt to look through the keyhole. It afforded a view of my bed, but not the rug and the floorboard beneath. Returning to my room, I stood on the rug, and looked around. My eyes came to rest upon the wall which divided my room from Mrs Fremantle’s old room, where Henry now slept. I walked over to the wall, and ran my hand over the panelling. My finger slid inside a small hole. I stood on tiptoe to put my eye to it, but I could see nothing.
I went next door to Mrs Fremantle’s room, and studied the wall from the other side. There was a picture hanging next to the bed, a watercolour of Exeter Castle. I removed it from the wall, and examined the hole behind it. I put my eye to it and looked directly into my bedroom. I could see the rug very clearly. It was where I got undressed at night. I felt sick.
The front door closed, and I heard Henry talking to the servants in the hall. I walked downstairs and followed him into his study.
‘Rachel,’ he said, with a delighted smile.
I closed the door behind me. ‘Where is it?’
He raised his eyebrows at my tone. ‘I had rather anticipated an apology.’
‘You spied on me,’ I said, hardly able to bear thinking about what else he might have seen.
‘Only because I suspected that you were lying to me. That document was stolen property. You could have got yourself into a great deal of trouble. As your guardian, I had a responsibility to act.’
‘Did you sell it to him? To Lazarus Darke?’
‘I merely returned it to a party with a legitimate interest in this matter. Mr Darke was kind enough to offer me a small reward for my trouble.’
‘How much?’
‘Really, my dear, you sound quite mercenary – and at such a time.’
‘How much?’
‘Two hundred pounds. It will come in useful given everything.’
So many words gathered force in my head, a pulsing maelstrom of fury. But before I could speak, the door opened, and Mrs Richardson hovered there, looking flustered. ‘It is the master,’ she said. ‘I was just standing there, folding a sheet, and he slipped away.’
I scarcely remember all the comings and goings after that. The vicar, the undertaker, neighbours came to pay their respects. I moved through those conversations like a ghost. Mr and Mrs Richardson laid Mr Antrobus out in his best suit. I kissed his cold forehead, trying to stop the tears from falling.
Much later, up in my bedroom, I gazed at my reflection in the looking-glass. My eyes were red, my face white and blotched. I thought of that little girl who’d come here, nearly ten years ago, saved from want and brutality and loneliness. I remembered running through this house, the light reflecting the stone outside, each room bathed in a golden glow.
Those walls were narrowing now. Everyone I’d loved in that house was dead. The codicil had been stolen. My money too.
‘My name is Red,’ I said to the ghost in the looking-glass. ‘I am the daughter of John Jory Jago and Patience De Lacy, whom people called Luna.’
Whether Lazarus Darke was working for Lady Seabrooke or Julius De Lacy, the codicil had surely been destroyed. Yet that at least put an end to the complications. Nobody would want me dead now – if indeed they ever had.
Despite all the troubles of the past, the De Lacys were still my family. If I explained my situation, then they might help me. But how to prove that I was who I said I was?
The codicil was gone. The Square of Sevens had burned in the fire. All I had to connect me to the De Lacys was the locket, my mother’s shawl, the pack of cards, and my knowledge of the Square of Sevens. Yet I could also be persuasive in the telling. For all these years, I had convinced people with my lies, surely now I could do so with the truth?
Kneeling to reach under the bed, I pulled out the portmanteau, which I had stored there ever since Henry had moved into Mrs Fremantle’s room. I packed lightly. Two day-gowns, one wrapping-gown, one nightshift, two petticoats, my mother’s shawl. Stockings, two lace caps, gloves, handkerchiefs and ribbons. My jewellery box containing my trinkets and paste-glass stones. A brush, hair-powder, soap. Don Quixote, a few packs of playing cards. I had only a little money of my own, not quite thirty shillings, and Henry kept his money locked away in a strongbox like a goblin king. I thought about stealing something of value and selling it, but the thought made me nervous. It might enable Henry to track me down, or prompt him to get the law involved. No, I would earn my own keep, I decided, as I had in the old days. My experience in London had led me to believe that people would pay a lot of money for an illicit fortune.
At a little after midnight, I heard Henry climb the stairs. I lay in bed for another two hours, until I was certain he’d be asleep. Then I dressed and crept downstairs, carrying the portmanteau. I went into Mr Antrobus’s study, where I lit a candle. In the desk drawer, I found the key to the cabinet of curiosities. Crossing the room, I fitted it into the lock. I wanted something to remember Mr Antrobus by, a new talisman to replace my golden heart. My eye came to rest upon a snakestone. I traced its tight coils with my finger, remembering our discussions about its origin. Mr Antrobus had scoffed at the notion that the snakes had been turned to stone by St Hilda or St Cuthbert. ‘There will be a scientific explanation,’ he’d said. ‘One day we will know it.’
The snakestone fitted neatly into my palm. I liked the feel of its weight. I was about to close the cabinet, when my eye fell upon the large green egg that Henry had given Mr Antrobus on the day he’d returned from his travels. Taking it from the cabinet, I carried it to the desk. I placed it upon the blotter, and looked at the snakestone in my hand. Then I brought it slowly down upon the egg, crushing the shell to tiny pieces.
There were other eggs in the cabinet. And many more in Henry’s wooden cases around the room. One by one I fetched them, placed them upon the blotter, and silently ground each to a fine powder.
When I’d finished, I slipped the snakestone into my pocket. Picking up the portmanteau, I went to the front door and eased back the bolts. The street was dark and still. Somewhere a bird was singing. There was a scent of honeysuckle on the air.
I felt as if I was back on that clifftop, the waves roiling far below – but when life gave you a push, what choice did you have?
BOOK TWO
Concerning a fortune told of Lady Seabrooke
CHAPTER ONE
Three of hearts, influenced by a diamond: it is in part a matter of money – and may be associated with an entertainment.
MONEY. FOR YEARS I had barely thought of it. Now the lightness of my purse was all too readily apparent.
It cost over a pound to board the Bath Flying Machine, but for half the price a passenger could take a seat upon the roof. I would happily have walked to London, keeping to the quieter roads, as I had walked all those years ago with Father. But if Henry tried to find me, a young red-haired lady journeying alone would make a conspicuous traveller in the country villages. Whereas in London, I could lose myself in those busy, anonymous streets. Which meant getting to the city as swiftly as possible.
In the yard of the White Hart Inn, I reluctantly parted with the fare – nearly half of my meagre fortune – and my portmanteau was loaded into the basket hanging from the back of the coach. One of the ostlers lifted me unceremoniously, and the guard hauled me up to join the other passengers on the roof. As the church bells struck five in the morning, the coachman gave a long blast on his horn, and we lurched out of the yard, the taller passengers forced to duck to avoid the inn sign over the gate.
As Bath receded into the distance, the carriage picked up speed along the turnpike. Clinging tightly to the wooden handle, I thought of that other carriage ride long ago, when Mr Antrobus had taken me from Cornwall to live in Bath. A seven-year-old child, a golden heart clutched in her small damp palm, sullen with grief and loneliness and suspicion. I wanted to hug that little girl, to reassure her that Mr Antrobus was the best man who ever lived. I thought of our last argument and reconciliation. His face in the window of the burning house. I watched the lambs playing in the fields, haymakers at work, the glint of a scythe. I mouthed a prayer for him, words neither one of us had ever truly believed.
‘What’s with the Friday face?’ A voice broke in upon my thoughts, one of a pair of young gentlemen travelling together. ‘A smile cures the wounding of a frown, you know.’
His companion, who wore a red cockade with a jet button in his black felt hat, burst out laughing at my expression. ‘I do believe you have been turned to stone, Jerry.’
There were eight of us on the roof. Nine, if you counted a boy perched in the basket with the luggage. Ten, if you counted a live turtle strapped to a box – clearly destined for some nobleman’s pot – which sometimes turned its head to regard me rather mournfully.
The coach stopped frequently to change or rest the horses. By Marlborough, my stomach was growling, and I ventured into the coaching inn. My fellow passengers crowded around the innkeeper, purchasing cakes and ale, but when I asked the price, I was rendered speechless by the sum. The innkeepers along the Bath Road evidently took full advantage of their monopoly. Returning empty-handed to the yard, I watched the sun dissolve in a haze of rose and gold over the fields, trying to forget the gnaw of hunger and all the perils that might lie ahead of me. Before too long, the coachman blew a few bars of ‘Black-Eyed Susan’ on his horn, and everyone piled back into the carriage.
Though the day had been warm, once darkness fell it grew bitterly cold up there. I’d brought only a summer cloak, and deeply regretted my lack of foresight. Jerry’s friend, the gentleman in the hat, offered me his brandy flask and, despite my misgivings about their company, I took it. The spirit possessed a delightful transgressive burn that helped mitigate my shivering a little. I passed the flask back, and the gentleman brushed my fingers, exclaiming at their chill. Opening his great-coat, he suggested I huddle inside. I replied frostily, and no more nips upon his brandy flask were forthcoming.
I slept only a little, terrified I would lose my grip on the handle and be pitched into the road. Rarely had I been more relieved to see the dawn. The rising sun slowly restored life to my numb limbs, but by eleven o’clock I longed for the cool night air again, the sun fierce in its indifference to those denied the shelter of the carriage below. Sticky, sun-burned, hungry, and exhausted, my spirits nevertheless surged as I glimpsed a yellow streak upon the horizon that slowly took on the form of the great metropolis.
We stopped twice more – at Turnham Green and the village of Kensington – and then we were racing alongside the Hyde Park, startling the deer, the coachman blowing his horn to warn strollers of our approach. Finally, at just after half past five, we clattered into the yard of the Bell Savage on Ludgate Hill. My legs wobbled uncontrollably when the ostler set me down, and I queued for my portmanteau amidst a bewildering press of people: relatives embracing my fellow passengers, waiters carrying trays of punch, men trying to sell us sweetmeats and plaster models of St Paul’s.
‘You look half-famished,’ a woman told me. ‘I have a house just around the corner, where I’ll give you a hot meal. I don’t like to see young girls all on their own in this dangerous city.’
She was respectably dressed, in a cygnet-grey gown and feathered hat, but I caught a glitter of calculation in her eye. There were women like her in the novels Mrs Fremantle had used to read. A hot meal became the offer of a place to stay, then a loan of money. The innocent maiden thus ensnared, her debt would be called in, and though Mrs Fremantle’s books had only hinted at the disgrace that awaited such a foolish girl, I could hazard a guess. Turning my back on the woman, gripping my portmanteau tightly, I walked out onto Ludgate Hill.
The stink was more intense than on my last visit, the taverns busier. Otherwise, the city looked the same – and yet everything was different. I had no guardian, no fine apartment, only sixteen shillings to my name. Nor did I have very much of a plan, beyond calling upon the De Lacys at the first opportunity. Yet I could hardly present myself at their door in my current condition: travel-soiled, portmanteau in hand, the very portrait of a desperate supplicant only interested in their money. No, I would call upon them respectably, confess my identity at a suitable moment, and when they enquired about my circumstances – as they surely would – I’d tell them everything.
All of which meant that I needed to find accommodation for the night, somewhere I might get some rest and some food and some hot water. I’d met many London acquaintances in Bath, and yet here in the capital, I would be lucky if they raised their hats to me in the park. Nor could I run the risk of word getting back to Henry. Taking fashionable lodgings was out of the question, given my scant funds, but I recalled that on my last visit to London, the landlady of the Crown and Magpie had asked me if I was looking for a room. She had seemed pleasant enough, and she might let me tell fortunes in her upstairs room. I could also enquire there after Morgan Trevithick, my father’s old friend, who I’d been told would be back in London in the summer.
The last time I had walked up to Smithfield, I had been greeted by a farmyard cacophony. This time, a great clatter of hammers and a rigorous rasping of saws drowned out everything else in the surrounding streets. When I reached Smithfield, I discovered that all the animal pens had been cleared away, the vast site colonized by dozens of carpenters and other labourers, busily erecting wooden booths, sheds, stalls, tents and other more elaborate constructions, some two or three storeys high. Hundreds of coloured signs dazzled the eye:
The famous WIRE-WALKERS of Russia; Mr Punch’s Puppetry Show; Mr Harris’s WAXWORKS: true to LIFE.
I had, of course, heard of the Bartholomew Fair. Some said it was the largest charter fair in all of Europe. I could believe it from the scene in front of me. All the houses and taverns on the perimeter seemed to have been taken over by the fair, the signs outside advertising plays, drolls and operas. The sign outside the passage that led to the Crown and Magpie announced that The Distressed Lovers would be performed there nightly. More hammers and saws echoed in the yard, where a stage was being constructed. A few labourers were resting outside the tavern, drinking ale in the sun. Threading a path between them, I attracted many crude comments about my hair, until my cheeks burned with a righteous indignation. More eyes regarded me in the smoky taproom. The same buxom woman in the ale-wife hat was behind the bar and she greeted me with a half-nod of recognition. ‘Back again, darling? What can I do you for this time?’
‘Last time I was here you offered me a room.’
‘That’s right. Three shillings a night.’
‘Are the bedclothes made of silk? The chamber pot of gold?’
She laughed. ‘You won’t find cheaper round here. Not now, during the fair. But a young lady like you surely don’t need to quibble over the shillings and pence.’
‘Would I be looking for a room here if I did not?’
She grinned. ‘Two, then. But don’t go telling my other guests.’
‘Or I might find out you let it to them for a shilling?’
‘There’s enough clowns out there in the fair,’ she said. ‘You want the room or not?’
Reluctantly, I passed her the coins, and she held out her hand for me to shake. ‘My name’s Kerensa.’
I hesitated for the barest moment. ‘Mine is Red.’
