The Chocolate Maker’s Wife

by Karen Brooks

  Tears rolled down his cheeks. He dug the heel of his hand into one eye then the other before continuing. He looked at Rosamund at one stage.

  The room finally stopped spinning and Rosamund was able to sit up. On the table by the window was a statuette of Venus. If only she could reach it, she could use it to deter Aubrey if he struck again.

  Finally, he let the last page drop. Rosamund lurched out of the chair in an attempt to get to the table by the window. He caught at her skirts, tripping her. Her head struck the floor.

  He dragged her towards him, uncaring that the dress tore, and gathered her into his arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sobbed into her breast. ‘I’m so sorry. I only ever loved you. With all my heart and soul. I felt good, right when I was with you. Only you. How can God not bless such feelings?’ He raised his head, searched her face, then burrowed into her neck. ‘Father said what we did was the worst of transgressions, that we would go to hell for them. When you died, I thought he was right — this was God punishing me. I wanted to die too. But then you came back. He brought you back to me. Our love was never wrong… But that —’ His arm flailed towards the pages. ‘Mother… how could she… how could she say those things? How could Father? Lovelace was never good enough for Helene. She was meant to be with me. With me.’ Sobs strangled his words.

  Vacillating between believing she was his sister and understanding she was not, his mind was torn asunder. Almost every instinct in Rosamund screamed at her to crawl from beneath him and escape. All except one. She listened to it.

  Putting her arm about him, she drew him closer, swallowing her abhorrence, gritting her teeth as she stroked the back of his head. ‘Hush there, Aubrey. Hush. It will be all right, it will be all right.’

  How long they sat like that, Rosamund didn’t know. Her head ached, her body began to protest at the peculiar position she was in. Staring at the wall, she watched the light change as the afternoon sped on through a smoke-filled haze: from golden to white-hot to lucent. Still Aubrey didn’t move. His weeping quietened. The rancid, wine-soaked, sweaty smell of him grew. She wanted to put her head back and close her eyes and sleep until the world righted itself. She wished Bianca was home, that Matthew would come in search of her, that someone would understand the door was locked and release her. But she knew that couldn’t happen just yet.

  If she came through this, she would leave Blithe Manor. She had no real rights here — nor did she want them. It was Aubrey’s house. His house, his memories, and he was welcome to them. What a sad, terrible place. What a sad, terrible family.

  Aubrey ceased crying. He lifted his head and stared at her. Mucus ran from his nose to the top of his lips. His cheeks were smeared with wet saltiness. More than anything he resembled a naughty little boy. A boy who committed the sin of loving his sister too much.

  As he continued to stare, his mouth worked itself into strange shapes, as if trying out words and discarding them. She reached out to brush away a stray hair that had fallen on his forehead. He slapped her fingers away and, without warning, stood up.

  Rosamund toppled from his knees.

  ‘You’re right. You’re not Helene, you ungrateful cunt.’ He spat and kicked her. ‘Helene wouldn’t make me cry. She would never cause me such pain. She crafted beautiful letters to buoy my spirits, to remind me of her constancy. She did everything she could to be with me, risking her life and the babe’s. We always promised we’d find each other, sail to the ends of the earth. That’s what she tried to do… Not like you.’ His foot flew out and connected with her ribs.

  She gasped and tried to protect her side with her hand, but he kicked her again, her fingers bearing the brunt this time.

  ‘Please, Aubrey.’ She tried to roll away.

  ‘There’s no pleasing you.’ He followed and kicked her in the head. There was a burst of agony, followed by darkness. She could still hear his voice.

  ‘I offer you marriage, a life together, but all you say is no. I offer you my house, my name. You say no.’

  She heard footsteps crossing back and forth, back and forth over the floor.

  ‘Helene loved me. She understood me. You’re just like the rest. You tell me it’s wrong. Lovelace used our letters to bribe me; to manipulate me. You’re just like him, using those awful words Mother wrote to make me behave the way you want. Father threatened me too. What about me? What about Helene? Why couldn’t you all just let us be? We never hurt anyone.’

  Rosamund had the presence of mind not to mention the baby… or Matthew.

  ‘You had to interfere, you had to try to keep us apart. It wasn’t our love that killed Helene. It was you. All of you. You never should have been given to Lovelace. Never. Mother deserved to die. Father too.’

  Through a veil of agony, she watched as he scrunched the pages together. Throwing them on the chair, she saw there were other things stacked there. Books, a news sheet, some pamphlets he found, a shawl. Searching his pocket, he added his pouch of tobacco, his pipe, before pulling out a flint. She heard him strike it a few times before it finally caught. Why was he doing that? Surely, if he wanted to burn the remnants of the diary, it was much safer to do so in the hearth.

  With growing horror, she saw him lower the flame to the pages.

  ‘No —’ she croaked.

  ‘No?’ cried Aubrey, without bothering to turn. ‘Is that all you can say to me? Why not? Just as fire cleansed London, I’m going to have my own little ritual and cleanse the past. Burn these foul musings and all their untruths.’ The corner of a page caught, blackening and folding as a thin ribbon of orange rippled across it. ‘May as well keep going.’ He lifted the flaming page and held it against the other papers stacked on the chair. ‘If you don’t want to live here, well, neither do I. In fact,’ he said, moving back as the objects began to smoke, ‘no-one will. It will be my monument to Helene… to our love.’

  He turned, a ghoulish grin upon his face.

  Behind him, flames leapt. The paper was old, the chair too. The other bits he’d found to feed his fire crackled to life. The time-worn pillows, the shawl, the upholstery covered in fine specks of ash and soot from days of blazes became hungry kindling. The flickering grew and danced, rising higher, catching the edge of the curtains.

  Rosamund tried to move, to cry out, but she couldn’t. Before her, Aubrey leapt from foot to foot like a pagan. He added more fuel, other news sheets, more books from which he tore the pages. He threw them on the chair which had become a torch. The heat was furious.

  Hand over hand, she hauled herself away, barely able to breathe. Her ribs were blistering bands of bruises, blood trickled down the side of her head. The curtains were aflame. The windows she’d opened to admit air now fanned the fire. It jumped across the windows, crawled across the walls. Paint peeled, plaster charred and dropped. Artworks became scorched, the faces stern and unmoving as they melted.

  Smoke rolled around the ceiling, falling to descend upon them both and choke them in its thick, cloying grasp.

  Shouts followed by screams issued from outside.

  ‘God!’ she cried, before a volley of coughs interrupted. ‘Help me.’ Dragging herself along the floor, the distance to the door was so vast, it was another country.

  A hand fastened around her ankle.

  ‘Don’t leave me, Helene. Please, not again.’ Ignoring her limp kicks, her pleas, her hoarse screams, Aubrey threw himself on top of her. She tried to thrust him away, but he was too heavy. She had no energy; she couldn’t breathe. Above her she was aware of his face as it swam in her vision; he was saying something but the roar of the fire was too loud, the way it undulated across the ceiling a blur of gold and orange seared her vision, she couldn’t look away.

  That was how she saw what happened next. There was an almighty crack and the ancient beam above began to sag before, with a great groan of protest, it fell.

  Rosamund watched it coming towards her over Aubrey’s shoulder. She tried to warn him, tell him to move, but the words wouldn’t come. />
  At the last moment she cowered in the shelter of his chest before something struck with a flash of white-hot torment and blessed oblivion claimed her.

  PART FIVE

  September 1666 to March 1667

  Though seas and land betwixt us both,

  Our faith and troth,

  Like separated soules,

  All time and space controules:

  Above the highest sphere wee meet

  Unseene, unknown, and greet as Angels greet.

  — To Lucasta Going beyond the Seas, Richard Lovelace, 1618–1658.

  FIFTY-TWO

  In which truth rises out of the ash of lies

  Matthew yawned and straightened his cramped legs, trying to shake off the leaden sleep that had overcome him as he sat vigil by Rosamund’s bed. For five days he’d barely moved except to talk to the doctor and to Filip, Bianca, Sam and the boys. All that time she’d drifted in and out of sleep, her head bandaged, her hand too. Her face was bruised. Her skin had been so very red when they first brought her to Seething Lane, but at least that had faded, unlike the memories that shrieked from her mouth and caused her to thrash about the bed.

  Dear God.

  If he hadn’t arrived at the house when he did; if Filip and Mr Nick and the women hadn’t already started to fight the fire with pails of water, he might never have been able to enter the manor. He shuddered; it didn’t bear thinking about. The additional burns he’d received when he kicked in the door, heaved the beam out of the way and threw Aubrey off her, they would heal.

  So would Rosamund — at least, her physical self would. But what of the scars those moments with Aubrey would sear into her soul? And, as he’d learned these last days and nights, there were other, older scars, upon which these would now be grafted.

  Alarmed by what spilled from her mouth as she drifted between consciousness and nightmares, he was helpless to soothe her. With Bianca’s aid, between them they settled her — if you could call the frown that puckered that sweet brow, the tremulous hands and mouth, settled.

  Able to piece together what haunted her nightmares, not wanting to acknowledge what must be true, Matthew slumped into despondency. How could anyone commit such terrible crimes against her? He’d thought he’d been dealt an unkind blow by fate when he encountered the Blithmans, but it was nothing compared to what Rosamund had been forced to endure before she ever met them. To think he’d once suspected her of knowingly being in league with Sir Everard to defeat him.

  He was ashamed.

  If Bianca hadn’t coaxed out of him what he’d heard and how he felt, and in turn offered what Jacopo had told her about Sir Everard and his intentions towards Rosamund, he might have done something hasty. When Bianca admitted she too had at first suspected Rosamund of having questionable morals, and how it wasn’t until she saw the marks upon her flesh that first night she began to doubt her initial impression, he felt somewhat mollified.

  Later, Bianca explained, she saw in Rosamund what everyone did who bothered to look beneath the large eyes, the quick smile, the joyous laugh and natural ebullience — not only a genuinely good-natured person who refused to allow outrageous misfortune to keep her down, but also a reflective and clever woman who was quick to read in others what they often didn’t recognise in themselves.

  Matthew thought on Bianca’s words as he studied Rosamund’s face in repose. He knew every hair in the arch of her brows, every fine vein atop her eyelids. The bow of her mouth, the sweep of those long eyelashes against the curve of her cheek. An artist could not have captured her the way Matthew could merely by closing his eyes.

  After Helene, he’d never have believed he could admit a woman into his heart again and allow her take it into her keeping. For that’s what this woman of endless surprises, resilience and kindness had done — this fine chocolate maker had taken the raw and bitter ingredients that made up who he was and remixed them until he was altogether more palatable.

  He smiled at his own musings and wondered, for the umpteenth time, what Rosamund would make of them. If only she would wake…

  He rose and opened the curtains to admit the grey light. Outside, rain was falling. Blessed rain after all this time. Hopefully it would be enough to quench the last of the fires. He watched it flow in shuddering bands down the glass. Perhaps he could yet hope for a miracle.

  Almost afraid to look, he turned to the bed to see what changes a new morning wrought, if any.

  What he didn’t expect was a pair of chocolate-deep eyes gazing back at him.

  He fell to his knees beside the bed and searched for her hand.

  ‘Rosamund,’ he whispered.

  She tried to talk, but nothing came.

  He poured her a glass of small ale, then tucked an arm behind her and gently pulled her upright. Lifting the drink to her lips, he could only stare as she winced when the cool fluid hit her dry, sore throat. A peculiar itch threatened the back of his eyes.

  When she signalled she’d had enough, he put the glass down and eased her back among the pillows.

  ‘How long?’ she asked, finally. Her voice was little more than a susurration and the effort clearly cost her. She began to cough and he held her while she barked and wheezed, relieved the doctor had warned them to expect that as her lungs cleared themselves of all the smoke she’d inhaled while she was unconscious in the burning room.

  Slowly he retracted his arm and watched her sink into the pillows. She looked so young with her hair cascading over her shoulders, hair that had been singed and even now bore a bright orange streak at the front, like a flame. A reminder of what she survived. It would grow out. If she hadn’t been wearing a cap, if Aubrey’s body hadn’t borne the brunt of that beam and protected her from the flames, well…

  Never believing he could be grateful to Aubrey for anything, he was for that. He could forgive him much for saving Rosamund’s life.

  He fought back the tears. God-damn but they were perilously close to his eyelids these days. He blamed lack of sleep at the same time as he almost crushed her fingers.

  Her dark eyes flashed and recorded everything around her. The flowers Grace picked each day and refreshed in a glass of water. The books Bianca brought and read to her. The news sheets Sam had collected so Matthew might also keep abreast of tidings, even if it was old news and much of it written by him. The bowls of chocolate lovingly prepared by Filip and the boys. In those chestnut eyes he saw a deep suffering he couldn’t recall seeing before, as if she’d caught a glimpse of hell and been forever altered. The very notion ate at him. He would take all that away if he could.

  ‘How long?’ repeated Matthew lightly, waiting until her last coughs subsided, summoning a small smile. ‘A mere five days. You’ve been asleep —’ near death, ‘or close to it for five days.’ An eternity by any other measure. ‘But look, we have rain.’

  They both gazed towards the window, the shower now a heavy, steady thrumming that cast a silver light over the room and drowned the sounds of the street. Above them, footsteps resounded. A door slammed shut. He didn’t know what to say. No, he didn’t know how to say it.

  ‘Where am I?’ she asked.

  Matthew gave a half-laugh. ‘Sam’s. We all are. For now.’ Then, seeing the questions in those extraordinary eyes, he told her everything — well, almost everything. He focussed on how he’d carried her out of the room and down the stairs, Filip running to his aid, just before the ceiling collapsed and the entire roof caved in.

  ‘If it hadn’t, there was a risk the other houses might have ignited, but it meant the flames were contained within the walls. But I’m afraid Blithe Manor is no more.’

  Rosamund took the news well considering the last of her sanctuaries was now but rubble and ash. The rain became heavier. Sodden ash.

  He went to stroke her face but held back. Once he’d learned what happened to her at the hands of her stepfather and brothers, how they’d made free with her, touching and more, the Satan-spawned bastards, the caresses he’d stolen, of her f
ace, arms and fingers, ceased. If he couldn’t touch her with permission, he’d deny himself the pleasure. It was the least this precious woman was owed.

  Understanding she wanted the entire story, he told her how Sam once more offered his house — not only to her, but to any of her maids and the drawers who could not return home, to Filip, Thomas, Solomon, Ashe, Grace and Bianca — Mr Nick as well. Even to him, as Mr Henderson’s house was nothing more than a scorched husk. Soon he would tell her how he and Sam had grown quite close, the naval clerk enjoying having another set of ears into which to pour his accomplishments.

  Sam would join Matthew’s vigil by Rosamund’s bed and share his daily adventures with him, a responsibility Elizabeth was more than content to relinquish. Thus Matthew learned that in the days since he had brought Rosamund here and the doctor had treated her, the King had not only addressed the thousands of homeless spread across Moorfields and beyond, he’d been greeted like a hero. Fighting the fire side by side with commoners, on horseback for over thirty hours, he’d earned the respect none of his other actions had since taking the throne. Matthew had seen the King for himself, and his brother, the Duke, both covered in filth, bone-weary, not only using hooks to pull down roofs, wielding shovels to help make firebreaks and laying explosives, but shoring up flagging spirits with praise and bonhomie and sharing the basic rations that were distributed. He and Sam agreed they hoped His Majesty would take advantage of the people’s goodwill to shore up his position and do more good. Somehow, knowing the fickleness of the people and the propensities of the pleasure-loving King, they confided that they doubted it.

  He wondered if he should mention Wat. How the curmudgeonly man, shocked by Aubrey’s death and what had led to it, and at a loss what to do with himself, had remained in the vicinity of Seething Lane and set about making himself useful. Every day he would enquire after the young mistress’s health —seemingly not out of duty as much as a genuine desire to know. One could almost believe he was relieved to be free of any obligation to Aubrey.