The Fire Court: A gripping historical thriller from the bestselling author of The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor
There was no reply. His mind conjured up a vision of her in a man’s chamber, her skirts thrown up, making the two-backed beast with him. He shook his head violently, trying to shake the foul images out of it.
He climbed the stairs. On the next landing, two more doors faced each other, number three on the right and number four on the left. Another, smaller door had been squeezed into the space between the staircase and the back of the landing.
Number three. Three was a number of great importance. There were three doors and three Christian virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity. Man has three enemies, the world, the flesh and the devil. Mr Gromwell’s number was three, whoever Gromwell was.
In God’s creation, everything had meaning, nothing was by chance, all was pre-ordained, even the insect trapped in the paint, placed there to show him the way.
He raised the latch. The door swung slowly backwards, revealing a square sitting room. Late afternoon sunshine filled the chamber, and for a moment he was transfixed by the loveliness of the light.
A window to God …
He blinked, and loveliness became mere sunshine. The light caught on a picture in a carved gilt frame, which hung over the mantelpiece. He stared at it, at the women it portrayed, who were engaged in a scene of such wickedness that it took his breath away. He forced himself to look away and the rest of the room came slowly to his attention: a press of blackened oak; chair and stools; a richly coloured carpet; a table on which were papers, wine, sweetmeats and two glasses; and a couch strewn with velvet cushions the colour of leaves in spring.
And on the couch—
Inside his belly, the serpent twisted and sunk its teeth.
Something did not fit, something was wrong—
The woman lay sleeping on the couch, her head turned away from him. Her hair was loose – dark ringlets draped over white skin. Her silk gown was designed to reveal her breasts rather than conceal them. The gown was yellow, and also red in places.
She had kicked off her shoes before falling asleep, and they lay beside the couch. They were silly, feminine things with high heels and silver buckles. The hem of the gown had risen almost to the knees, revealing a froth of lace beneath. One hand lay carelessly on her bosom. She wore a ring with a sapphire.
But she wasn’t Rachel. She didn’t resemble Rachel in the slightest. She was older, for a start, thinner, smaller, and less well-favoured.
His mind whirred, useless as a child’s spinning top. He had a sudden, shameful urge to touch the woman’s breast.
‘Mistress,’ he said. ‘Mistress? Are you unwell?’
She did not reply.
‘Mistress,’ he said sharply, angry with himself as well as with her for leading him into temptation. ‘Are you drunk? Wake up.’
He drew closer, and stooped over her. Such a wanton, sinful display of flesh. The devil’s work to lead mankind astray. He stared at the breasts, unable to look away. They were quite still. The woman might have been a painted statue in a Popish church.
She had a foolish face, of course. Her mouth was open, which showed her teeth; some were missing, and the rest were stained. Dull, sad eyes stared at him.
Oh God, he thought, and for a moment the fog in his mind cleared and he saw the wretch for what she truly was.
Merciful father, here are the wages of sin, for me as well as for her. God had punished his lust, and this poor woman’s. God be blessed in his infinite wisdom.
And yet – what if there were still life in this fallen woman? Would not God wish him to urge her to repent?
Her complexion was unnaturally white. There was a velvet beauty patch at the corner of her left eye in the shape of a coach and horses, and another on her cheek in the form of a heart. The poor vain woman, tricking herself out with her powders and patches, and for what? To entice men into her sinful embrace.
He knelt beside her and rested his ear against the left side of her breast, hoping to hear or feel through the thickness of the gown and the shift beneath the beating of a heart. Nothing. He shifted his fingers to one side. He could not find a heartbeat.
His fingertips touched something damp, a stickiness. He smelled iron. He was reminded of the butcher’s shop beside his old premises in Pater Noster Row.
Was that another sound? On the landing? On the stairs.
He withdrew his hand. The fingers were red with blood. Like the butcher’s fingers when he had killed a pig on the step, and the blood drained down to the gutter, a feast for flies. Why was there so much blood? It was blood on the yellow gown: that was why some of it was red.
Thank God it was not Rachel. He sighed and drew down the lids over the sightless eyes. He knew what was due to death. When Rachel had drawn her last labouring breath—
The cuff of his shirt had trailed across the blood. He blinked, his train of thought broken. There was blood on his sleeve. They would be angry with him for fouling his linen.
He took a paper from the table and wiped his hand and the cuff as best he could. He stuffed the paper in his pocket to tidy it away and rose slowly to his feet.
Rachel – how in God’s name could he have forgotten her? Perhaps she had gone outside while he was distracted.
In his haste, he collided with a chair and knocked it over. On the landing, he closed the door behind him. He went downstairs. As he came out into the sunshine, something shifted in his memory and suddenly he knew this place for what it was: one of those nests of lawyers that had grown up outside the old city walls, as nests of rooks cluster in garden trees about a house.
Lawyers. The devil’s spawn. They argued white into black with their lies and their Latin, and they sent innocent, God-fearing men to prison, as he knew to his cost.
Birds sang in the garden. The courtyard was full of people, mainly men, mainly dressed in lawyers’ black which reminded him again of rooks, talking among themselves. Caw, caw, he murmured to himself, caw, caw.
He walked stiffly towards the hall with its high, pointed windows. At the door, he paused, and looked back. His eyes travelled up the building he had just left. The shadowy man was back at the first-floor window. He raised his arm at the shadow, partly in accusation and partly in triumph: there, see the rewards of sin. Fall on your knees and repent.
Suddenly, there was Rachel herself. She was coming out of the doorway of the blackened ruin next to Staircase XIV. She had pulled her cloak over her face to cover her shame. She was trying to hide from him. She was trying to hide from God.
Caw, caw, said the rooks.
‘Rachel,’ he said, or perhaps he only thought it. ‘Rachel.’
A lawyer passed her, jostling her shoulder, and for a moment the cloak slipped. To his astonishment, he saw that the woman was not Rachel, after all. This woman wore the mark of Cain on her face. Cain was jealous of his brother Abel, so he slew him.
Not Rachel. His wife was dead, rotting in her grave, waiting among the worms for the Second Coming of the Lord and the everlasting reign of King Jesus. Nor had Rachel borne the mark of Cain.
‘Sinner!’ he cried, shaking his fist. ‘Sinner!’
The bite of the serpent endured beyond death. Perhaps he had been wrong about Rachel. Had she been a whore too, like Eve a temptress of men, destined to writhe for all eternity in the flames of hell?
Caw, caw, said the rooks. Caw, caw.
It is marvellous what money in your pocket and a toehold in the world will do for a man’s self-esteem.
There I was, James Marwood. Sleeker