Chapter Two

The sun woke me.

The brightness burned through my eyelids so that when I turned away and opened up, my sight was full of floating shadows. I lay there for a moment waiting for it to clear. When it did I saw I was lying on a bed pushed up against a panelled wall.

The wall was covered with pencil drawings, sketches and little paintings on squares of card. There were scores of them overlapping each other and pinned to the wood all the way up to the ceiling. Men, women, children … all of them trapped in a lively moment by Lucca’s clever hand.

I reached up to touch a face I knew – Peggy Worrow. A scrawl of dark curls tumbled over her shoulders showing up the line of her neck and her rounded jaw. Her pretty, heavy-lidded eyes looked at me direct. Lucca had caught her true. There was a faint line between her brows and her teeth bit into the edge of her full lower lip. She always did that when she was thinking. I pulled my hand back like it was scalded. I knew only too well what Peggy was thinking about. It was why I couldn’t face her, not even on paper.

I looked up at the people crowded above me. I recognised nearly every one of them. They were from the halls – the hands from the workshops, the girls from the chorus, the little ones who served the tables, all of them my people.

Lucca worked fast and bold. He could capture a fleeting expression in just a few perfect lines and smudges. It came to me that every person pinned to that wall seemed more alive and vital than I felt. Lucca Fratelli was wasted as a scene painter in my halls. Hall, I corrected myself. Only The Carnival was what you might call a going concern now, seeing as how The Gaudy had burned to the ground two months back and The Comet was in need of a new plaster ceiling.

I closed my eyes, but I could feel them all staring down at me, judging me.

See, it was like this. Less than a year ago, my grandmother, Lady Ginger, had left me her empire on the banks of the Thames. She kept her blood in the business. But Paradise – a name that must have been chosen by someone with a rare sense of humour – wasn’t the sort of family enterprise a girl could take a pride in. As it turned out, my inheritance was a filthy tanner’s pit of every vice and crooked trade you had a name for, and some you most likely didn’t.

I was one of the Barons of London. Kitty Peck from the halls – one of the great and secret Lords who controlled every stinking foulness that drove the City like an engine.

My own grandmother had put my hands to the levers and now they were black as pitch.

There were moments while I sat alone with her ledgers when I fancied that if I listened hard enough I could hear the machinery running. I could feel it too. The thrum of evil from every piss-streaked corner of Limehouse rose through the soles of my boots and jangled my nerves until I wanted to open my mouth and scream it out.

There wasn’t a way back now. And there wasn’t a way forward, neither.

They say the sun never sets on the Empire of our Queen on account of the fact that it stretches so far round the globe that it’s always daylight somewhere in her lands.

The sun never rises in Paradise. My empire is a thing of the dark. It runs from the docks in the east, where every second man, including the customs, is in the pockets of my skirts, to the grand houses up west where the toolers and jemmy boys on my books are in the distribution trade. That is to say they distribute their nightly takings among my pawny men back east.

It all goes around and about – it’s neat work. On a shady day a proper toff might pay a sly visit to Uncle Fishman’s shop on Rose Lane to buy a little gold piece for his skirt, who, as it happens, is most probably a girl I have the running of. Without looking at the ledgers I could tell you her worth to the nearest farthing.

These days I can give you a price for everything. Women, men, girls, boys – and more, if you’ve a mind to imagine it. There are singular houses in the warren north of Penny Fields where a type can buy the flesh of any living creature by the hour, but that’s not the half of the skin game.

I didn’t know how sour a gentleman’s taste might turn until I studied my grandmother’s books in the company of her man of law, Marcus Telferman. There was a morning in his dusty office in Pearl Street when I’d asked him what exactly was on offer in the premises in Severs Street listed as Domus Cadaver.

I wish I could un-know that, but I can’t.

There’s a lot of things I wish I didn’t know. Christ! It comes to something when you think of a gang of toolers as the clean side of the trade.

At the beginning, not that long ago, I thought I could do it different. I reckoned that even though Paradise was mucky as a dockers’ easement I could shine it up and let some air in. I was always good with a mop and a bucket in the halls. Now I know there are some stains you can’t wash away.

The Gaudy, The Carnival and The Comet and the people who worked them were the only part of my inheritance I took a care for. They were where I came from before Lady Ginger claimed me as her own, but now I’d failed them too. I’d failed everyone pinned to that wall.

I rolled over. The window shutters had been hooked back. Sunlight bounced off the square glass panes and sliced across the bed.

Lucca’s bed.

I sat up and the thin cotton sheet fell away. I was naked. I wasn’t bothered by that. These days Lucca was the closest I had to a brother, and besides, I wasn’t his type.

No, what bothered me was the fact that I was tucked up in bed in his room, not back at The Palace. It surprised me that I’d actually begun to think of that soot-pitted pile off Salmon Lane as home. When she went off to Christ knows where Lady Ginger left her house to me, along with everything else.

‘Lucca?’ His name grated in my throat. My mouth was foul as the floor of Jacobin’s cage – my grandmother’s mangy old parrot had come with The Palace, along with her Chinese servants, Tan Seng and Lok.

I rubbed a hand over my sticky forehead. Tan Seng would be wondering where I was and he wouldn’t be happy. Being a servant, he wouldn’t say as much, but I’d get the treatment all the same. His long grey plait would flick about behind him like the tail of an angry cat.

‘Lucca?’ This time it came out as a rasping croak.

I pulled the sheet around me and slipped off the bed. My legs were weak as the pins of a newborn foal. There was a tin basin half-filled with murky water on the floor next to the bed, a small pile of rags mounded beside it. The sight of the water made my throat burn. I wanted to lift that chipped white basin and drain it to the last drop. My lips were rough and papery to the touch. I tried to lick them into life, but my tongue rolled about in my mouth like a fat-bodied moth. Surely Lucca would have something clean to drink here? I scanned the room. There was a clouded glass on a wide deal table drawn up near the hearth. I gripped the sheet and stumbled across the boards. The glass was dry.

I doubled over as a pain gnawed at my belly. I had to steady myself against the table until it passed. There were piles of papers stacked across the wood. More drawings – mostly animals and birds this time – but on top of a pile nearest the hearth there was a face.

I pulled the sheet closer. Lucca had drawn himself. He hadn’t turned to the side or hidden behind a curtain of hair, instead he looked out direct. If you was to cover the bad half of the picture with your hand, he was beautiful. It’s a peculiar word to use for a man, I know, but it was true.

The other side was a different story.

Years back he’d been in a fire and it had marked him for life – inside as well as out. Lucca had drawn what he thought everyone saw. On the right, scars pulled his skin, sealing one eye behind a knot of melted flesh. The side of his mouth and nose were crimped together, the damaged skin spreading into a mesh of ridges that stretched to his ear and down his neck to his shoulder.

The drawing was a cruel thing. There was a naked quality to it that made me feel like I was eavesdropping on a private conversation.

How could anyone love a ruin?

He asked me that once and I didn’t have an answer. I’d never known Lucca to look any different. Tell truth, over time I’d lost the knack of seeing the scars. I saw him instead.

I put the drawing back on the pile and then, after a moment, I moved some others on top of it, so it was hidden.

I turned from the table to take in the room. As I moved it was like the steam hammer at Grand Surrey was working double time between my ears. My neck was clammy with sweat and I could smell the grease in my hair. I tried to remember how I came to be here but it was all a fug. Every time I caught an echo of something it fizzled out quicker than a Lucifer.

I wrapped the sheet around me and went to the window. Lucca’s lodging was on the second floor of an old-time merchant’s house with a view out to the river. At one time this must have been a grand room with its high ceiling and wide marble hearth. The fat merchant must have sat at this window watching for his trades to come in. Now the house was split and rented by the yard.

I’d wanted Lucca to come and live with me at The Palace, but he said he needed the light for his art. I reckon the truth of it was that my grandmother’s house gave him the fear.

I pressed my forehead against the glass. It wasn’t cool.

Today the Thames was almost as blue as the sky. Tall ships, sails furled, were moored in rows out across the water. The river was so still they hardly moved. Their ropes hung slack and silent. I couldn’t see a soul on the decks or on the quay stones below the window. As I stood there a single bell started off nearby. The dull sound matched the tolling in my head. I counted for the hour, but the bell carried on. Perhaps it was ringing out for a wedding? Given the leaden tone it seemed more likely to be calling mourners to a funeral.

There was a rattle from behind and the sound of a key in the lock. I turned to see Lucca standing in the open doorway, juggling a set of keys with a brown paper package.

‘Lucca!’ It was hardly more than a whisper but he looked up. He stepped sharp into the room and slammed the door behind him with his foot. I was surprised when he put the package on the floor and turned to lock the door again.

‘How long have you been awake?’

‘I … I … Not long.’ My tongue felt as if it might shred as I tried to make the words. He bent to take up his package.

‘You will be thirsty.’ It was a statement, not a question. Instead of coming to me he set the package down on the table on a pile of drawings. Then he went to the far side of the hearth and opened up a cupboard set flush in the panelling. I watched him stretch up to take down a brown jug with a square of beaded material draped over the rim. As he moved I saw grey moons of sweat beneath the arms of his white cotton shirt. The summer was fierce as a Bengal tiger.

The splash of water into the glass made me swallow hard. My throat creased up on itself and I started to cough.

‘Here.’ He came to the window, still holding the jug, and handed me the glass. I took a gulp, but couldn’t force it down. It felt as if my throat was stuffed with pages from a cheap family Bible. Water dribbled from my lips.

Lucca shook his head. ‘Lentamente … slowly.’

The tiniest sip filled my mouth. I managed to squeeze it down and took another sip, then another. I found I could move my tongue now.

‘More … please.’ I pushed the glass into Lucca’s hands and he filled it again. This time I tipped it back and finished the whole thing.

‘Very elegant, Fannella.’ Lucca stared at me, his lips twitching as if there was something more he wanted to add. Fannella was his name for me. It came from the times when he heard me singing in the gallery at The Gaudy – I was a slop girl back then. In his language Fannella means little bird. It was meant as an affection, but there wasn’t a deal of warmth in his brown eye now.

‘Are you hungry?’

I recognised the griping in my belly. I nodded. Lucca went back to the cupboard and took down a painted china plate. He loosened the brown paper package and emptied half a dozen golden sugar-dusted buns over the blue and white flowers.

‘Here.’ He sat down, gestured at the chair opposite and pushed the plate towards it through the stacks of his drawings. I didn’t need asking twice. Without thinking about the gaping of the sheet wound around me I ran over, sat down and tore at the buns, cramming my mouth with doughy, currant-studded sweetness. Lucca refilled the glass and watched as I switched between the water and the food. When the last of the buns was gone he spoke again.

‘She was right then.’

‘Who was?’ I ran my finger round the plate, licking the last of the sugar from my fingers.

‘Nancy.’

I looked up.

‘That’s where I found you, Kitty. In Nanking Nancy’s pit in Shambles Passage off Broad Street. Or don’t you remember?’

The room was suddenly so quiet you could hear a mouse fart in the skirting. Of an instant, it all came crowding back. Nancy’s den, Lucca finding me there and most particularly why I went that evening.

I had to get going. There was someone I needed to see.

‘Where’s my gear?’ I looked at the bed expecting to see my jacket and breeches folded up neat nearby. Lucca was most particular about his rooms. The clothes weren’t there. I stood up abrupt, knocking the spindly chair over. It clattered to the boards behind me.

‘Where’s my jacket? And … And the rest?’

Lucca didn’t answer. He scrunched up the brown paper and tossed it onto the unlit hearth behind him. The cotton sheet slipped and I had to scrabble at my shoulder to keep myself decent.

‘I’ve got better things to do than sit around here. Tan Seng will be—’

Lucca cut me off. ‘He knows exactly where you are, Kitty, and why. He’s known for the last four days.’

Four days? I stared at the bed and at the bowl and the rags.

‘Tan Seng told me where you go and how often. He’s worried. That’s why I went to find you.’

I pulled the sheet around me. I felt like an exhibition now.

‘He had no right. Where I go is my business and you can keep out of it, Lucca Fratelli. The whole bleedin’ lot of you can mind your own. You’re a pack of old women, only you’re the worst. Joey always said …’

Joey? The thought of my brother made my belly ball up tight as a knuckler’s fist. He was the reason, part of it leastways, why I went to Nancy’s pit. When the thoughts came swooping in like gulls mobbing the lines of Billingsgate gut girls, I needed something, somewhere to make it stop. But not for this long.

I stared at the door. It came to me how Lucca had locked it behind him.

‘You say it’s been four days you’ve had me here?’

He nodded. ‘Today is the fifth. It is Sunday. The bread is from Zaelman’s – the only bakery open. I went there after mass. I knew you would be hungry when you came to yourself again.’

‘But you locked the door. What am I, a prisoner?’

He shifted some of his drawings about on the table, moving pages to different piles. ‘You ran a fever. When I found you I thought it was the opium, but it went deeper. I brought you back here and I’ve been with you all the time. Do you remember anything?’

I didn’t answer. He started to neaten the stacks so the ragged edges of the papers lined up square. ‘Even if you hadn’t fallen ill I would have kept you here. We agreed.’

‘We? Who’s this we?’

‘Tan Seng and Lok.’ Lucca carried on sorting. I noted he didn’t look at me. It was deliberate. ‘We thought it best if I kept you here and persuaded you that your …’ He came across the drawing of himself, paused and pushed it further into the pile. ‘… excursions were dangerous. It would be for the best. The brothers thought I could convince you to stop.’

I saw it clear now and it riled me. I was angry but, worse than that, I was ashamed. I stepped closer to the table. ‘So that’s it, is it? You kept me here under lock and key thinking that one of your holy Roman sermons might sort me out. Is that why you’ve been to mass today, to get inspiration? You must think me a fool, Lucca.’

‘Aren’t you?’ His lopsided mouth tightened ‘What is happening to you?’

He stared at me expectant and I turned away. I didn’t need to be a stage mind-reader like Swami Jonah to take in what Lucca was telling me. But he was wrong. I wasn’t like them other weak souls in the dens. I chose when I went and what I took – and it was my business, no one else’s. I was perfectly in control of myself.

Five days? Turns out I wasn’t.

Lucca’s voice clipped up. ‘It has to stop. Do you know what I am saying, Fannella?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Do you understand?’ His voice was soft and low. It was the tone of it, concern dipped in disappointment, that fired me again.

‘Of course I do! But I reckon you should understand that I can do what I bleedin’ well like.’

Lucca reached out and caught my hand. He tried to thread his fingers into mine, but I didn’t let him in.

‘Kitty, you mustn’t let it destroy you.’ He held tight. ‘I don’t mean the opium. Something happened, I know it. I saw you return from that first meeting with the Barons. Since then you have become a different person. Now you are una cosa vuota …’ He paused for a moment searching for the English. ‘A hollow thing.’

Sweat trickled down my forehead.

‘I know you too well, Fannella. I’ve watched you. It is as if a light in you has been … estinto,’ he snapped his fingers, ‘is gone.’

‘What did you expect? I’m a Baron, don’t you know what that means?’

Of course he didn’t. But he was right about darkness in me.

My head filled with shadows as he carried on talking. ‘You made a promise, Fannella, to all the people in the halls. You promised to deal with them fairly and they believed you. Now The Gaudy is a ruin and The Comet won’t open again until spring next year at the earliest. Fitzpatrick is …’ he grimaced, ‘un porco grasso and that fox Jesmond needs to be watched, but they know the business. You should listen to them. Jesmond is in profit at The Carnival so at least one of the halls is providing work, but it’s not enough. People are worried – there’s talk. We need you to lead us. We look to you.’

Something Lady Ginger told me went through my mind. I heard her sour sweet, little-girl voice clear as if she was sitting in the room.

Paradise is more than three theatres. They are merely a painted facade.

Now I knew the truth of it. I closed my eyes. A pain was gnawing at the back of my head.

Lucca pulled a sheet free and held it out. I took the page from his hand and stared at the drawing. The girl on the paper had dark circles beneath dull eyes and sunken cheeks. It was me.

‘Peggy says you have become too thin.’

‘Oh, she says that, does she? I’d like to know how she—’ I broke off. Tell truth, I hadn’t seen Peggy in a good while. Not since Danny. I couldn’t bear to look her in the eye.

Lucca sighed. ‘She was at The Carnival three weeks ago when you were in the office with Jesmond. One of your increasingly rare visits. She’d come with some costume repairs. She hid from you because she was afraid – afraid that you would turn away and reject her – again. Peggy says you’ve ordered Tan Seng to refuse her at the door of The Palace. She thinks it is because you don’t want her to find out.’

‘Find out what?’ I couldn’t hide the tremor in my voice.

‘That you are ill. She is like me, Fannella, one of the few people who can really see you. And besides, she needs you. She is not …’ Lucca shook his head. ‘She is not strong. The business with Danny. We all knew he had debts, but to abandon the mother of his child …’

He went quiet for a moment. I watched him work at a knot in the wood of the table top with the tip of a finger. I was relieved when he started up again on a different tack.

‘While you were sick, you … you spoke aloud, Kitty. I know things have changed since you became one of them, became a Baron, I mean. You’ve changed … But …’

He stopped tracing the pattern and looked at me direct.

‘I never thought of you as a murderer.’