As we turned off the Ratcliff into Cannon Street Road a bell went off in the tower. I’m no expert when it comes to buildings, not like Lucca anyway, but there was always something about St George’s that struck me as sinister. It didn’t look like a church, more like someone had been playing a game with a full-size version of one of them sets of building blocks you give to a child – Joey had one, I recall. Nanny Peck only let us break it out of its wooden box and over the rug in front of the fire on Sunday afternoons.
I looked up. All I could make out in the dark was the great black shape of the church over to the right, a jumble of sharp points and turrets – no lights in any of the windows. I wasn’t surprised at that. Who’d want to be shut in there for the night?
Mind you, it was typical of my grandmother, I thought, to choose somewhere so grimly theatrical for a meeting. No doubt she’d arranged it to appear like Old Nick himself in a sudden flare of torchlight on the steps. She was going to give a pantomime performance, was she? Well, I was ready for her.
It was still pelting down. I bent forward to keep the rain out my eyes and saw the poor sodden ghost of a feather from my bonnet dangle limp in front of my face. I clutched my bag to my chest as we followed the line of the wall towards the entrance to the churchyard.
We turned at the gate and Lucca’s hand tightened on my arm. I looked up.
There was a carriage drawn up ahead alongside the double set of curved steps leading into the church. It was lacquer black – neat with glowing lamps, two horses in the traces and a hunched figure up top. One of the horses turned to look at us. It tossed its head and skittered about on the stones.
The huddled driver leaned down to rap on the side.
Immediately the door opened. A narrow set of steps clattered down and a figure in a long dark gown stepped out. The old Chinaman bowed and motioned to the carriage. Of an instant I was minded of the time just before my first night up in the cage when The Lady had taken the trouble to visit me and remind me of my duties. Fitzy had to carry me across the yard at the back of The Gaudy because my slippers wouldn’t take the snow, and then he’d delivered me through the door of this same carriage, practically into her lap.
I took a sharp breath. ‘Lady Ginger might well want to speak to me, but I’ve got a few things I want to ask her as well. Come on then, Lucca.’
We walked towards the carriage, but as we came close the Chinaman stepped forward to bar our way. He drew a hand from a baggy sleeve, pointed at Lucca and shook his head.
I gripped Lucca’s hand. ‘Surely she can’t mean to leave you out here in this! She knows I wouldn’t have come here without you.’ I raised my voice to be sure she’d hear.
He turned the brim of his hat lower against the rain.
‘Of course, but it’s you The Lady wants to speak to, Fannella, not me.’ Lucca glanced up at the brooding bulk of the church. ‘I will wait under the porch. At least it’s dry there.’ He squeezed my hand, released it and loped up the steps. At the top he saluted before dipping into the shadow.
The old Chinaman watched him go and then he bowed again. Now he shuffled aside to let me climb into the carriage. I couldn’t see inside, the curtains were drawn at the narrow windows and the door was only half open. But I could smell her.
I held the bag close to my chest and reached for the gilt handle beside the door. The carriage rocked about as I climbed the steps and dipped my head. The opium came strongly now as I pushed the door.
Firm hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me roughly inside. Something cold was clapped across my face. I struggled and tried to shout, but the cloth smothered my nose and mouth. I could feel bony fingers pressing it tight. There was another scent now – a sickly sweetness with an undertow of the cleaning stuff I’d used with Lok.
I tried not to breathe, but the hand clamped down harder. At the same moment I was hauled deeper and pushed down into the seat. It was black as a cassock inside the carriage. I twisted round trying to make some sense of what was happening, but I couldn’t see anything clear – just shapes and shadows. Someone pinned my arms to my sides and another person forced me forward so that my forehead would have touched my knees if it hadn’t been for the hand in between. Through the soaked rag, the fingers felt like a mask stiffened across my face.
My tongue began to burn and my nostrils stung. The last thing I heard before I went was the rattle of my bag as it tumbled to the carriage floor.
*
When I opened my eyes it was almost light. An arch of palest purple showed where a thin curtain had been drawn across a window a few yards away. My head was throbbing as if someone was standing over me twisting a fork into my right temple.
I screwed my eyes down tight and opened them again. The room was square with a large brick fireplace over to the right. The remains of a log still glowed in the hearth, filling the air with the rich scent of burning cherry wood. It would almost have been a comfort if I had the first idea where I was.
I was stretched out on my left side, my right hand resting on some thick, rough material. I could feel the embroidered pattern of it under my fingertips. I followed the line of the looped flower with the pad of my index finger and stared at the window.
I couldn’t remember how I got here. The last thing I could bring clear to mind was Lucca standing at the top of St George’s steps. He raised his hand, waved and then . . .
And then what?
I shifted about to see more clearly. I was fully clothed and lying on top of a narrow bed with a sort of canopy overhead. The folds of material above me were pleated into a tent-like affair fringed with tassels. Beyond the canopy I could see a ceiling supported by three broad wooden beams.
The bed creaked as I pulled myself into a sitting position and the tassels up top began to sway. Immediately my stomach turned itself inside out. I tried to swallow the bitterness that bubbled up into my throat, but it was no good. Someone had set a china bowl on the nightstand next to the bed. I took it quickly into my lap and bent forward, spattering clear liquid across the delicate painted flowers.
A minute later it came again, but after that second bout the cramping settled. I set the bowl back on the nightstand, pulled up my knees and stared at the panelled room around me, taking more of it in now in the thin light. There was a padded chair next to the fire and my bag and bonnet were on it, the ribbons of the bonnet had been laid flat over the arm so that the fire could dry them. My feet were bare – someone had removed my stockings and they were now hanging from the mantle. I saw that my boots had also been set neatly next to the hearth.
Something like this had happened before. I thought of that time I woke in my bed at Mother Maxwell’s to find James Verdin curled up next to me. He was naked, point of fact we both were – my clothes were flung around the room like a bomb had gone off in a laundry. It wasn’t a thought I liked to dwell on. I pulled at the stiff hem of my skirt, rifling through the cotton petticoats to check my unders. I was wearing my drawers. Apart from the stockings and boots I was still buttoned up tight.
Over to the left there was a door. I slipped from the bed, freezing up like one of them museum statues Lucca likes to draw as the old boards beneath my feet betrayed me. It didn’t seem to matter where I stood, they groaned as if an elephant was tramping about on them. I made my way over quiet as I could and tried the handle, turning it gently so as not to make any more of a racket, but it was locked.
My hair had come loose somewhere along the way. I pushed it back and knotted it tight at my neck. My head was still bad, but it was more of an ache now rather than the stabbing pain I’d woken to. A memory swam into my mind and I tried to net it before it vanished into the depths again.
Darkness – a carriage?
I frowned, leaned back on the door and stared at the unfamiliar room. And then, of a sudden, it all came back. The Chinaman, the hand over my face, the drug-soaked cloth.
Where the bleedin’ hell was I?
I walked over to pull back the curtain. A dew-soaked garden several floors below was silver green in the early light. Rows of hedges romped off across a well-tended lawn towards a bank of trees. Some of the hedges had been clipped into shapes. There were balls, pyramids and great lumpen things that put me in mind of a herd of animals standing guard.
I could hear gulls making a racket, but that didn’t mean much. You get them on the river and they follow the carts round Billingsgate, yowling and diving on the boxes like cats with wings.
I pressed my forehead against the glass, my breath misting the latticed pane. I rubbed it clear and caught sight of a lead pipe running down beside the window. I could climb down and sprint across the grass and into the trees and then keep going.
I listened for a moment. Except for the ticking of a clock set on a chest against the wall there wasn’t a sign of life. I tested the window, quietly at first so as not to draw attention, but after a moment I was scrabbling at the lattice work and rattling the curled iron handles.
It was no good. Like the door, it was locked. I was a prisoner.
I went over to the fireplace and took my bag from the chair. I snapped it open. The letters were still inside along with my purse – and David Lennox’s broidered ’kerchief.
None of this was making sense. Was this where The Lady was waiting for me or had I been drugged and taken to someone else? I thought about that night at The Gaudy and brought my hand up to my ear. There was still a crust of blood where the dangling jewel, a ball of faceted green glass, had been ripped away.
I glanced up at a painting over the hearth as if I might find an answer there. A young couple sat together on a bench in a landscape full of sheep. The man looked very pleased with himself and his livestock. His hat was set at a jaunty angle and his hand rested in a lazy, proprietorial manner on the shoulder of the girl with him.
If I was the fanciful type I might have said that she had the look of Ma about her. She was dainty and fair with large dark eyes that seemed almost too large for her small pointed face. Her stockinged feet, encased in prettily ribboned shoes, poked out from under a bell-shaped skirt. They weren’t the kind of shoes a girl could walk far in.
I moved my bonnet, reached for my own stockings and sat down heavily in the chair to put them on. If I was going to make a run for it at some point I would need my boots.
The clock on the chest cleared its throat and began to chime.
On the sixth and final stroke there was a jangling sound as someone unlocked the door. It swung open and the old Chinaman who’d come with the carriage last night shuffled into the room. He bowed once and gestured to the door. He coughed and dabbed his mouth on his sleeve, before speaking.
‘The Lady will see you now.’