‘Could they read and write?’ I said.
‘These two?’ Mundy shrugged. ‘You can tell by their marks on the boxes. Layne could read, more or less, but he could barely write his own name. Jem could write well enough if he had to, and he could read as well as I can. He’d come down in the world. Because of his wickedness, no doubt.’ The steward raised the lid of the box. ‘He kept a strange collection of rubbish. But it’s only to be expected. The man was strange enough himself.’
On top was laid a shabby serge coat. Beneath it was a small silver cup, a Bible with print so tiny and poorly set as to be almost unreadable, a cracked clay bowl with a ragged ochre line running around the rim, and a child’s doll about five inches long, crudely carved from a single piece of wood. The doll’s face was flat with tiny, blunt features gouged into it. The eyes were black dots. The mouth was a faded red line. It wore a dress of ragged blue cotton.
Mundy poked the cup. ‘This has some value. Jem must have brought it with him from his old place. Or perhaps he had it from his own kin – I heard it said that long ago his father was a clergyman, but they turned him out of his curacy for his godless ways.’
‘Mistress Alderley told me he had once worked for the family of her husband’s first wife.’
‘Indeed. Mistress Lovett’s kin.’ He frowned. ‘Best forgotten.’
‘Why?’ I said.
Mundy put the cup back in the box. ‘Are you finished here, Master Marwood? I have people waiting.’
‘One moment, sir.’
I returned to Layne’s box, partly because I sensed that Mundy was trying to hurry me away. I took up the almanac. I lifted it up to the window and turned the pages against the light, to examine the paper more closely.
As my father’s son, I knew at once that the paper was French, which was normal enough for any book. The watermark, a version of the bunch of grapes, told me that it came from a well-regarded mill in Normandy that used only rags from pure white linen in its manufacture. The type was sharp and clean, probably from a newly cast case of type, and it had been set by a man who knew his business.
The binding told the same story. All in all, this was not a book that you would expect to find in the box of a servant who struggled to write his own name.
I closed the almanac and put it into Layne’s box, tucking it under the cloak. Something stabbed my finger, and I withdrew my hand with a cry of pain.
‘What is it?’ Mundy said.
I squeezed the pad of the index finger on my right hand, and a tiny ball of blood appeared on the tip. ‘Something sharp.’
I licked the blood away and pulled aside the cloak. A batten had been nailed across the bottom of the box, bisecting it from back to front, in order to strengthen it. One of the nail heads stood proud of the wood, and its edge was jagged – and sharp enough to pierce the skin. There were two other battens parallel to it, to the left and the right. It struck me that the central one was made of a different wood from the others. It was newer, coarser grained and slightly thicker. The nail heads attaching it were new and rough, whereas those on the other side were dark with age and deeply embedded into the soft wood.
I knew a little about hiding places. In his prime, my father had been something of a carpenter, like many printers, and sometimes he had had a need to conceal papers and other small objects. I took out my knife and used the blade to lever away the central batten from the base of the box. The nails securing it were much shorter than the size of their heads suggested.
‘Master Marwood! I cannot allow you to damage the property of one of our servants, even if—’
Mundy broke off as, with a twist of the blade, I wrenched up the baton. Beneath it, gouged into the base of the box, was a shallow and irregular depression about four inches long and two inches wide. It contained a piece of paper, folded into a flat package.
I picked it up. The paper was unexpectedly heavy. Something shifted within its folds. A guinea fell out. Then another; then a third, and then three more. I picked one up and held it to the light from the window. The gold shone like a miniature sun. The guinea had been minted this year: 1666.
‘You had better add these to your inventory, sir,’ I said.
I took up the paper, smoothing it out before I rewrapped the gold inside it. There was something written on the inside in a neat, clerkly hand.
Coldridge. PW.
I rubbed the paper between finger and thumb and held it up to the light. Even before I saw part of the bunch of grapes, I knew that it was probably an endpaper torn from the almanac I had just examined.
Six new guineas. An expensive almanac. A servant who had been barely literate at best. Two, neatly written words: Coldridge. PW.
I asked to see Mistress Alderley again before I left Barnabas Place. I was shown into the parlour. She was writing at the long table while her sour-faced maid sewed by the window.
She looked up. ‘Did you find anything?’ she said abruptly.
‘Very little, madam.’ I glanced at the maid, whose head was lowered over her work, and said quietly, ‘Layne had six guineas concealed in a hidden compartment of his box.’
‘What of it? His savings, I suppose.’
Perhaps she was right, I thought, though it was a great deal of money for a servant to have. The guineas had shown no signs of use. Their hiding-place had not been made long ago, for the scars in the wood had not darkened with age.
‘There was something written on the paper that held the guineas.’
She sat up, suddenly alert. ‘Yes? What?’
‘“Coldridge PW”. Does it mean something to you?’
She shook her head, the interest draining from her face. ‘Why should it?’
‘According to Master Mundy, Layne wrote but little and poorly. So perhaps Jem wrote it. But in that case, why was it in Layne’s box?’
I waited but she did not reply.
‘On Thursday you told Master Williamson that Jem once served a connection of your husband’s first wife,’ I said.
She stared at me, as if surprised and even irritated that I should have raised the matter. ‘Yes – he served the father of my husband’s niece, Mistress Catherine Lovett. She’s his niece by marriage, not blood, by the way – the child of his first wife’s brother. Jem served her father, when they lived in Bow Lane off Cheapside. Afterwards he went with Catherine to her aunt’s house, and then he came with her here.’
‘May I speak to Mistress Lovett, in that case?’ I said. ‘As Jem was once a servant of her father’s she may know more about him.’
‘That’s not possible. My niece is away at present, staying with friends in the country. She finds the summer heat intolerable, especially with this Fire, and her uncle decided a change of air would be good for her.’ Mistress Alderley took up her pen and lowered her head over her letter. ‘Perhaps you can ask her about Jem when she returns. Pray remember me to Master Williamson when you see him, and thank him for his kindness to us.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOT AND FILTHY, Cat had arrived in Three Cocks Yard in the early hours of Thursday, 6 September. The Fire was still raging but the wind had changed, swinging from the east to the south and slackening in force. She was aware of that even as she stumbled through the crowds. During the Fire, everyone was aware of the wind.
She had nothing but the clothes she stood up in, the small bundle she had carried with her, and the object that Jem had pressed into her hand when she fled from Barnabas Place. She was still in pain from Cousin Edward’s attack – a dull, continuous soreness, punctuated by stabs of agony that made her gasp. Her thighs and her arms were tender with bruises.
On any other night, Three Cocks Yard would have been dark and silent at this hour, the houses barred and shuttered. But nothing was normal now. The sky reflected the Fire, casting a lurid glow over the yard. A heavily laden wagon filled half the space.
Mistress Noxon’s house was beside the apothecary’s, which Cat knew by the sign of the pestle swinging in the air above the s
hop. The front door was standing open. Two porters were manoeuvring a pair of virginals down the steps, with a young gentleman scurrying about them like an agitated terrier.
Behind them, in the hall of the house, was a small, handsome woman of middling height and generous proportions. Unlike the men, she was perfectly calm. In her hand was a sheet of paper.
‘And that’s thirty-five shillings for the dinners ordered in, sir,’ she was saying in a sharp voice that cut through the racket in the yard. ‘If I don’t have it on the nail as well, you’ll have to leave the rest of your furniture to cover what you owe.’
She caught sight of Cat as she was squeezing past the wagon. She motioned her to wait and continued to deal with the young gentleman. A large, red-headed manservant staggered down the stairs with a crate in his arms.
‘Don’t take that out, John, not until he’s paid his reckoning. Leave it in the back of the hall.’
The servant did as he was told. He saw Cat and stared at her.
‘Don’t stand there dreaming,’ the woman snapped. ‘Bring down something else.’
At last, when the young gentleman had paid his bill and left with his wagon, she came down the steps from the front door and beckoned Cat forward.
‘Who are you?’
‘Mistress Noxon?’
She ran her eyes over Cat, taking in the bundle under her arm. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘Jem sent me.’
‘Oh yes? Jem who?’
Cat fumbled in her pocket and brought out the object that Jem had given her. It turned out to be a dark, smooth, flattish stone in the shape of an oval, which might have been picked up on a shingle beach. There was a white line of another mineral embedded in it, orange in this light. It made a wavering M if you had a mind to see one there.
M for Martha? Mistress Noxon took the stone, stared at it for a moment, and slipped it in her own pocket.
‘Mistress Lovett,’ she said softly.
‘Yes.’
‘You need somewhere to lodge.’ It was not a question. ‘How long?’
‘I don’t know.’ Cat swallowed, for her mouth was terribly dry. ‘I have a little money. Not much.’
Mistress Noxon ran her eyes over Cat, inspecting her as if she were a prospective purchase. ‘Mistress Lovett can’t stay here. Nor can any young lady. This is a house where single gentlemen lodge.’
Cat turned to leave by the street door, which still stood open.
‘You don’t have to go,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘But if you stay, you stay as a servant and you work for your keep.’
‘I’m not afraid of hard work.’
‘You will be by the time I’ve finished with you. Well? Do you stay as a servant or do you go as a lady?’
‘I stay.’
Mistress Noxon folded her arms across her bosom and stared at her. ‘As a servant.’
Cat dipped a curtsy. ‘If it please you, mistress.’
‘Close the door, then, and come down to the kitchen.’ Mistress Noxon led her into the house, calling up to the manservant, telling him to bar the door. In the kitchen, she said, lowering her voice: ‘In this house, your name’s Jane.’
‘Yes, mistress. Has Jem talked of me? Did he say he might send me to you?’
Mistress Noxon brought down the flat of her hand on the table. ‘You’re not to mention him. If you want to stay, you will be Jane and nothing but Jane and you will do as you’re told and not ask foolish questions.’
‘But I should tell you why I—’
‘I don’t want to know,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘It’s better not.’
The house in Three Cocks Yard had been bought as a speculation by a wealthy Oxford haberdasher. It stood with three neighbours in a flagged court, from which a narrow alley led down to the Strand on the northern side, not far from Temple Bar.
The principal apartments were let to single gentlemen. There were three lodgers. At present, only Master Hakesby was in residence. He was a draughtsman, an elderly man of uncertain temper. He was working on a design with Dr Wren, the architect and mathematician whom the King had appointed as one of his Commissioners for the rebuilding of London, which made him automatically an object of fascination to Cat.
The haberdasher had installed Mistress Martha Noxon as housekeeper. She had formerly been in his service as his wife’s chambermaid and, if Margery’s insinuations were to be believed, as his own paramour. Margery did most of the cooking but Mistress Noxon considered her too slatternly to wait at table. There was also a manservant named John and a ten-year-old boy, who was more trouble than he was worth and slept in a sort of kennel by the kitchen chimneystack.
The servants were told that Jane was a stranger from a village near Oxford, and that she was a remote connection of Mistress Noxon’s. They knew that this was probably a lie, and that the young woman called Jane was a mysterious intruder in their world, but they were too afraid of Mistress Noxon to ask questions or tell tales.
Cat did the work she was given. She kept her mouth shut when she could. When she couldn’t, she roughened her voice and tried to imitate the inflections and turns of phrase that the other servants used. They thought she gave herself airs, but they left her alone for fear of Mistress Noxon. There was even an unexpected pleasure in being Jane, not Cat: in being someone else.
The work was often hard but it was not strange to her. She had been brought up not only to run a household but to do the various tasks, from cooking to cleaning and beyond, that she might set a servant to do; this was good for the soul, for it kept a woman humble, which was pleasing in the eyes of God and man; it was also prudent, for it enabled one better to direct and instruct one’s own servants.
For Cat, what was strange and unpleasant was not so much the work itself but to learn how a servant felt as she scrubbed a floor that belonged to someone else. It was a different feeling from that of someone whose family owned the floor.
When Cat thought about her former life it seemed remote and somehow foreign to her, as if it belonged to a different person. But she was too tired to do much thinking. The work was exhausting, but that was good because sometimes it stopped Cat from remembering what she had done to Edward, what he had done to her, and what her life had now become.
She was so heavy with weariness that she usually fell asleep as soon as she climbed into bed in the attic she shared with Margery. But she had bad dreams, haunted by Cousin Edward, and by the fear that she was carrying his child. On the first night, she woke both herself and Margery with her screams.
Two days after Cat’s arrival, Mistress Noxon summoned her to her little room by the kitchen. The skin around her eyes was pink and puffy.
‘You should know that he’s dead. My uncle.’
‘Oh mistress.’ Cat’s eyes filled with tears. Jem.
‘Tell no one. There will be no mourning. We don’t know him, and we never did. You understand? The man was such a fool. I never met such a one in all my days.’
But Mistress Noxon kept the stone that Jem had sent her by Cat in her pocket, together with her money, her keys, her rings, and other precious things.
Cat wept herself to sleep that night – as quietly as pos-sible, for fear of waking Margery again. Without Jem, she had no one who cared for her unconditionally and completely. Without Jem, she was alone. Unless her father found her.
According to the gossip of servants, if a woman did not take pleasure in an act of copulation, she could not become pregnant by it. Cat did not believe this, not least because she could not understand how any woman could take any pleasure whatsoever from such an assault on her body even if it were not forced on her.
Besides, she had seen animals about the business in the farmyard and fields of Coldridge. For females at least, copulation had more to do with grim necessity than pleasure.
The fear that she might be pregnant remained. She could think of nothing worse than carrying Edward’s ill-begotten child. She became even more afraid of this than of being taken up for Edward’s murder.
<
br /> She had made her calculations. She thought it probable that Edward was still alive. Had he been killed, the news would surely have penetrated even to Three Cocks Yard by now, even to the basement kitchen that was the centre of her life. The Alderleys were such a prominent family that the intelligence would have spread throughout the town faster than the Fire itself.
You could not hide a murder, even in a house like Barnabas Place with high, thick walls, though you could hide lesser crimes. Assault and battery, for example. Or rape.
At the beginning of her fourth week at the beck and call of Mistress Noxon, she had pains in her groin and the blood began to flow. Some men believed that a woman’s monthly courses were full of evil humours, that they blackened sugar, made wine sour and turned pickled meat rancid. Men, Cat thought, were such fools that they would believe anything. Mistress Noxon provided the necessary cloths to deal with the blood, and even an infusion of valerian and fleur-de-luce to ease the pain.
Cat welcomed the discomfort and inconvenience. If she had fallen pregnant, it would have been necessary to find a way to kill the baby.
Gradually, Cat became aware that there was another difficulty in the shape of John, the manservant. He was a tall, broad-shouldered lad, a country boy at heart, with red hair, bright blue eyes and a slab-like face whose colour and approximate shape made Cat think of a leg of mutton before it had gone in the oven. Margery, the cook, thought he was the finest young man that the world, let alone London, had to offer. John had been quite happy to accept this adoration and even to repay it at his convenience with small doses of affection.
But then Cat had come to Three Cocks Yard and, despite her best efforts to be plain Jane, to be colourless and dull in every particular, John found her of absorbing interest. He was not a man to whom words came easily, but he had other ways of making his feelings known. He blushed when she came into the room. He would appear at her shoulder when she was emptying the slops and take the pots from her in his enormous hands. Once, when the kitchen boy showed a tendency to be impudent to her, John clouted his ear with such force that the boy’s feet lost contact with the ground.
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