The Fire Court

by Andrew Taylor

  Roger Poulton

  At a signal from Hakesby, she took the pouch, poured the coins into her hand and counted them. Brennan watched, his mouth slightly open, his eyes on Cat’s face. He turned his head away when he saw that she had noticed him.

  After Poulton’s servant had gone, and the money had been locked away in the strongbox, Hakesby dismissed Brennan for the day.

  ‘Will you pay back Marwood?’ she asked when they were alone.

  ‘We shall give him ten pounds at least.’

  ‘Not more?’

  ‘We must hold the rest of it back for ourselves. You can take the money to his house tomorrow, if you’re well enough.’

  ‘Of course I shall be well enough, sir,’ she said. ‘What about the rest we owe him?’

  ‘Tell him he must wait a little. He gave us eight weeks, didn’t he? After what he’s done to you, the least he can do is be patient. And I have not forgotten the money I owe to you, either.’

  Cat tried to change the subject. ‘Talking of hackneys, you’ll need one this evening when you go back to Three Cocks Yard. Shall I send the porter for one?’

  ‘Wait – not yet. There is something I wish to say.’ He stopped, and glanced furtively around the room, as if to make sure they were really alone. ‘Something that concerns you. Sit here where I can see you.’

  She obeyed. ‘I am perfectly well, sir. I am quite capable of returning to my drawing board tomorrow. I—’

  ‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘I’ve been uneasy in my mind about you.’

  ‘There’s no need, sir.’

  He held up his hand, and they watched the tiny tremors that rippled through it. ‘This doesn’t get better,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it will. What will you do when I’m gone?’

  ‘That won’t be for—’

  ‘Or when I grow too ill to work? Indeed, what shall I do when I reach that point? How shall I keep body and soul together?’

  ‘I shall find a way to support us both. Perhaps Dr Wren—’

  ‘I’ve been turning this over, and I’ve come to a decision.’

  Cat glanced sharply at him. His voice was sterner than usual.

  ‘I wish to offer you a contract,’ he went on. ‘Purely as a matter of business, and with clear benefits, rights and responsibilities on both sides. An agreement, governed by law.’

  ‘Why? We do very well as we are.’

  ‘What I propose is that you marry me.’

  ‘Marry you?’ She stood up, knocking over her stool, and backed away from him. ‘Marry you? Dear God, sir, have you gone mad?’

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  ‘Mistress?’

  The voice insinuated itself into Jemima’s dream, a desperate confusion of flames and screams and tumbling buildings.

  Glad to be wakened, she opened her eyes. Hester’s plain face, shiny with sweat, hovered above hers. She was frowning and biting her lip with anxiety. For a moment Jemima wondered where Mary was. Even as she was opening her mouth to ask, the memory of yesterday flooded back.

  ‘Please, mistress, there’s a gentleman below. You said to wake you.’

  Jemima knew by the light that it was evening now – not late, for it wasn’t dark: the colours were beginning to leach away, the outlines were softening.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Mr Chiffinch. He’s with master in the study.’

  ‘Bring my gown. Sit me up.’

  Hester was willing but stupid, and the fear of doing wrong made her even clumsier than usual. The pain in Jemima’s belly grew suddenly worse. Her bandages were wet. They needed changing, and probably the sheets as well.

  At the thought of all that this signified, her grief overwhelmed her, and her eyes filled with tears. Can you mourn the loss of someone who has not been born? Of course you can.

  And of course she mourned Mary, too. But that was different.

  Hester poked Jemima’s arms into the armholes of the gown. Jemima bore the girl’s clumsiness with patience she thought of as saintly. What did it matter now?

  The midwife and the physician had separately examined her yesterday evening. Both of them had said in their different ways how sad her loss was, but neither could see any reason why she should not carry a healthy child to full term. The physician recommended he prescribe another course of treatment. The midwife, perhaps more usefully, promised to pray for her.

  When Jemima was settled, her face washed with a sponge, the cosmetics applied and her book to hand, she sent Hester away with instructions to bring her a cup of chocolate.

  ‘Make sure they tell my husband that I am awake, and I should like to see him.’

  She waited, wondering why Chiffinch had come here, and turning over in her mind what she wanted to say to Philip. In the event she did not have long to wait before there were footsteps below and the sound of men’s voices. The front door opened and closed. She heard Philip climbing the stairs. He walked more slowly than usual, and paused every few steps, as her father did, to rest and draw breath.

  He tapped on the door and entered. He asked how she did. As well as could be expected, she said, given what happened to her yesterday. He nodded and went to stand by the window.

  ‘Well, sir. What did Chiffinch want with you?’

  Philip swung round. She couldn’t see his face clearly because the light was behind him. ‘He came to warn me that the King is angry.’

  She stared blankly at him. ‘What about?’

  ‘Me. I am dismissed – I’m no longer a Groom of the Bedchamber. Which means I’m five hundred a year poorer, too. As well as everything else.’

  She knew at least part of what ‘everything else’ meant: the position at Court; access to the King; the power to whisper words in the ears of influential people; the little presents from less influential ones; the ability to dazzle tradesmen into providing infinite credit.

  ‘They will all start dunning me in a day or two,’ he went on in a dull voice. ‘I shall have to sell the freehold of Dragon Yard for what I can get. Unless your father …?’

  ‘I’m sorry for it, of course,’ she said, sidestepping the question. ‘But at least we will no longer be tied to the Court.’

  ‘There’s more. The King has banished me. I’m forbidden to come within twenty miles of London.’ He walked from the window to the bed and glowered at her. ‘It’s this damned business with Dragon Yard,’ he burst out. ‘Poulton has been spreading poison at Court about me. Arlington and his creature Williamson are using it to undermine Chiffinch. Do you know what the gossips are saying? That I bribed Lucius to woo Mistress Hampney to get her support, and he killed her when she would not do as he wanted.’

  Her fingers plucked at the embroidery on the coverlet. She kept her voice light. ‘But isn’t it true? That you asked Gromwell to woo her? Wasn’t that why you were willing to pay the costs of his book and heaven knows what else? And have him here, in this house, at my table?’

  ‘Well, yes – in a manner of speaking. I explained all this to you the other day, on the Bridge.’ The confidence seeped away from his voice. ‘But killing her? Why would he do that? He swore to me that he never laid a finger on her. Not in that way. Besides …’

  Jemima studied his face. ‘Besides what, sir?’

  He swallowed. ‘You can’t still think that I was making love to her, can you? I—’

  There was a knock on the door. Philip swore, stormed across the room and opened it. Hester was outside, carrying a tray. He picked up the jug of chocolate and threw it down the stairs. Hester scurried away, leaving her sobs in the air behind her.

  He slammed the door and pushed the bolt across.

  ‘I don’t know what to believe,’ she said coldly. In fact she was inclined to believe him now, but it was wiser not to tell him that. Not yet.

  Philip made an effort to control his anger. ‘I swear it was Gromwell who was Celia’s lover, not me.’

  ‘And what else did he do for you?’

  ‘He helped Richard move her body, and bury it in t
he ruins. If he’d left her where she was, he was afraid of being taken up for murder, and then the whole business about Dragon Yard would have come out.’ He sat down on the bed. ‘There’s worse about Gromwell. You’d better know the whole of it. People have been whispering about the little clerk who died in a fire in his chambers at Clifford’s Inn. He worked at the Fire Court, you know, so he must have known about Dragon Yard. People say he knew something about the widow’s murder and tried to blackmail Gromwell about it.’

  That was true enough, Jemima thought, about the blackmail at least: she had seen the proof of it locked away in Philip’s cabinet, the blackmail letter that ‘T.C.’ had sent to Gromwell. And so, of course, had Philip. So he was not being entirely frank with her.

  ‘And … and there was also some other folly about the widow’s maid. It appears that the foolish girl hanged herself in Lambeth – from grief after her mother’s death or perhaps her mistress’s. But now they are saying that Gromwell killed her too, to stop her mouth about his wooing of the mistress.’

  ‘Of course he killed the girl,’ she said. ‘And the clerk. And the whore.’

  He shrugged. ‘The King is persuaded that all this is my fault. That I used Lucius as the monkey did the cat’s paw, to scrape the nuts from the fire.’

  ‘Gromwell’s dead,’ she pointed out, hoping she did not sound triumphant. ‘They can’t prove anything, and nor can he. Nor can the King. He can’t blame you for what Gromwell might or might not have done.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not a matter of proof. The thing that matters is what the King believes. According to Chiffinch, he thinks I tried to interfere with the running of the Fire Court, and that enrages him even more, because he wants the court to be seen as impartial. And the affray yesterday on London Bridge …’

  ‘Affray?’ she said. ‘Is that what you call it? Gromwell is dead, killed by Mary, who was trying to help me. And you yourself killed my poor Mary.’

  He reared away from her. ‘I ran her through in self-defence, madam. I swear it. Even Chiffinch agrees with me there. What else could I have done? She lost her wits and ran mad. She could have killed you next.’

  She almost laughed at such a ridiculous suggestion. She leaned forward and pointed at him. ‘Why, sir, all this happened because of you and your friend Gromwell. I was only there because the pair of you snatched me from my coach and held me in that dreadful place where I was nearly burned alive. As for your behaviour to me at the Fire Court—’

  ‘Lucius thought—’

  ‘Can’t you think for yourself for once? You’ll have to, now Gromwell is dead. He would have killed me if there had been any advantage in it to him. Between you, you made me miscarry our son. And so there’s another murder to lay at Gromwell’s door and yours. Your own child’s.’

  Exhausted, she sank back against the pillows. After a moment, and to her surprise, he sat down on the bed. He tried to take her hand, but she pulled hers away.

  ‘I intended none of this,’ he said gently. ‘Not the first, not the last.’

  ‘The murders, you mean?’ she said. She felt the pain deep inside her, the absence. ‘Our child’s death?’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone to die.’ Then Philip added, so quietly she had to strain to hear him, ‘If I could live these last few weeks again …’

  She watched the assurance flaking away from her husband like the shell from a hard-boiled egg, exposing something white and flabby beneath. How different from this was the hero whom she had sworn to love, honour and obey in the church at Syre.

  ‘And I – I’m sorry about the other thing,’ he went on. ‘I’m sorry that I didn’t believe you when you said you were with child, and I’m sorry that you lost it.’

  She turned her head away from him.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right – perhaps Gromwell killed Chelling and the maidservant in Lambeth,’ Philip whispered. ‘Indeed, he hinted as much to me … You remember that night when you comforted me?’

  She nodded. Despite herself, her heart softened towards him. ‘Was that the night when Chelling died?’

  ‘Yes. They said it was an accident, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t. I could see it in Gromwell’s face when he told me of it, and I smelled burning on his clothes. He only meant to frighten the little man into keeping his mouth shut, not to kill him. It was an accident … But did he kill Celia Hampney, too? He swore that he didn’t.’ Philip looked at her, his face unhappy. ‘Jemima, will you tell me what happened that day when Celia was murdered? What you did that afternoon? What you saw?’

  The silence settled around them. Jemima stared at the blue and silver embroidery of the bed hangings. It was time to abandon the convenient fiction that fever had purged her memory of that afternoon when the Widow Hampney had died and all this had begun.

  ‘Mary found me a hackney,’ she said at last. ‘I was angry with you – I own it. I thought you had gone to see that woman. I’d seen her letter, remember, and I knew where the meeting was, in Gromwell’s chambers at Clifford’s Inn. We went for a drive to Whitehall. It was hot and I had a fancy to go on the river because it was cooler.’ She hesitated. ‘And later we came ashore at the Savoy.’ There was no reason to make this easy for him.

  He persevered. ‘Gromwell told me you went to Clifford’s Inn. By yourself.’

  ‘Then let us say that I did,’ she said. ‘I was distressed, of course, and it was on the spur of the moment. What did he tell you about me?’

  ‘He said he saw you from the window when he was with Celia, and you came up his staircase, but he went out on the landing and stopped you from entering his chamber. He was half-undressed … He heard footsteps below so he bundled you out another way, by the fire-damaged staircase next door, to avoid scandal. You – you did not make it easy for him. When he came back, Celia was dead. Lying in her own blood.’

  She stared at her husband. She had the measure of him now. For better or for worse, as the vows said. ‘Gromwell told more lies than the devil, sir. He lied to you as he lied to everyone else. When the widow wouldn’t do as he wanted, he fell into a rage and killed her as he did the others. Perhaps she threatened to betray your shabby little plot to the world. That’s the long and the short of it. Whether he killed her after I went there or before is neither here nor there.’

  He bowed his head. ‘Perhaps you are right.’

  After a moment, she surprised them both by taking his hand. ‘What is done is done. We must make the best of it, sir. I suppose we shall give up the lease on this house and go to Syre. After all, we can afford to live nowhere else. We shall live very quietly, I expect, and perhaps our prayers for a child will at last be answered. My father will be pleased.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  So there was more laudanum, and another expensive visit from the physician.

  Margaret nursed me when I allowed it, and Sam strutted about the house as if he were its master. In his own mind, he figured as the hero of the affair on London Bridge, on the grounds that he had rescued Cat and myself, and brought us to safety.

  My patience ran out with him on Thursday. In practice, I told him, all he had done was spend money that wasn’t his in the alehouse on the bridge, and spend more money at the tavern near Billingsgate, and bring me home in a hackney. And if he thought I hadn’t noticed that he was more than half drunk by the end of it, he was even more of a fool than I thought he was.

  By this time I had rebelled against Margaret’s tyranny and come downstairs to the parlour. As a compromise, I wore a velvet cap on my head, as well as a gown and slippers. I also permitted Margaret to drape me with blankets. But at least I was no longer in bed. The laudanum kept the pain at bay, though it plugged up my bowels and gave me bad dreams. Still, the price was worth paying, at least for now.

  I sent Sam to Whitehall with a letter for Mr Williamson. I gave him a brief and strictly factual account of what had happened, both at the Fire Court and on London Bridge, with certain omissions, particularly in relation to Cat. I did not rece
ive a reply.

  I also gave Sam orders to call at Henrietta Street and enquire after her. Hakesby told him that she was in her closet and he could not see her. According to Hakesby, she appeared very little hurt, apart from cuts and bruising, but no thanks were due to me, who had led her quite unnecessarily into the dangers that had nearly cost her her life.

  ‘Tough as an old boot, that one,’ Sam said when he passed on the message to me. ‘Mark my words, sir, she’ll outlive the lot of us.’

  He also told me the news: that Lady Limbury’s maid, the one I had seen at the Fire Court yesterday, had run amok on London Bridge and killed Gromwell with a blow to the head, and that Limbury had run her through with his sword before she could turn on himself and his wife. He had also heard that Lady Limbury had been in great pain, so probably the maid had attacked her as well.

  I chewed over the information in my mind. From what I had seen of Lady Limbury’s maid at the Fire Court yesterday morning, she had seemed devoted to her mistress, to the extent of risking her master’s anger by trying to help her. Why would she attack her mistress? It was surely more likely that the maid had been trying to protect her from Gromwell and Limbury.

  Not that it mattered. The dead cannot defend themselves. Besides, a gentleman’s word weighs more heavily in the scales of justice than a servant’s.

  No more bad dreams, I promised myself in the small hours of Friday morning, no more laudanum, despite the pain from my burns and bruises.

  I lay awake in the darkness. I heard the cocks crowing over the middens of London, and then the relentless chattering of the birds. I pulled back the bed curtains and watched the light, grey and dirty like the river on a cloudy day, returning to my chamber. I told myself over and over that I could bear the pain if I set my mind to it.

  The sounds of the Savoy coming slowly to life gradually surrounded me. I heard Margaret crossing the hall and the rattle of the bolts on the door to the yard. I fell asleep. There were no more dreams, thank God, or not that I noticed.