A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (18 page)

-
she did not like to ask advice from this woman, either -

"What
can I do? To make it - make him - better?"

"Be
quiet?" the widow said tartly. And for possibly the first time in her
life, Thomazine did not answer back.

She
went up, later, though, when the sun was setting behind the rooftops, and the
attic was floating in a sea of rose-gold. If you listened carefully, you could
hear the city turn about its axis, taking a breath as the day's work ended and
the night's work had not yet begun.

He
was breathing. That was the first thing she listened for, halting on the top
stair to listen. (She did not know what she would have done if he was not.)

And
then he gave a sigh of his own, and turned over with a great creaking of bed-ropes
and a rustle of blankets, and he sounded as if it hurt him, and she dropped to
her knees at the side of the bed and burrowed her head into his shoulder and
wept great hot, bitter tears of shame. "Tibber," he said drowsily,
"I am not dying of anything, maid, and I'd prefer not to be drowned in
salt water."

“Does
this mean you’re better?” she sniffed, and he laughed - she felt it, felt his
body jerk with silent amusement - and brushed his dry lips to her forehead.

“For
now, love. For now. Tired, but - mending.” He did not look well. His hair was
plastered dark with sweat across his forehead, clinging in limp rags to his
back, and his nightshirt was soaked right through. “A night’s sleep,” he said
firmly. “And - would you - could you do a thing for me? I’ve a message that
must go.
Must
, tibber, or I’d not ask you. I should have been at the
table with Mijnheer di Cavalese today already, and God knows my name is
uncertain enough as it is with him, at present.”

“Mine-
who?”

“Cavalese.
He is, believe it or not, a Dutchman. He is a merchant - oh, lass, may I
trouble you with the details another time, for my head is ringing like a
blacksmith’s anvil.” He sat up stiffly, reaching for pen and paper. It was not
like his usual sure, spare script. His hands shook, and she had to dip the pen
in the ink for him, for he could not keep it still enough to find the
ink-bottle. But in the end it was done, a matter of a few apologetic lines that
he had not transacted business with Master di Cavalese that day due to the recurrence
of a tertian ague, and might he be excused without causing offence.

“Can
you take it to Master Pepys? You mind his office - we were there, was it only
last week?” He was beginning to shiver again, but she suspected it was the
healthy shivering of a man in a wet shirt sitting in a draught, and she tucked
her tippet about his shoulders feeling, for the first time, competent.

“I
should rather stay with you,” she said honestly, and kissed his forehead.

“I
should rather you did, too, tibber. But take your maid, and go. Please.”

35

And
of course she did not want to go, did not want to leave him ill and unhappy,
did not want to leave that stout, shabby, comfortable house on such a night -
hardly a night for seeking assignations, with the mist seeping in up the river
in draggled white ringlets, and the bitter incense smell of chimney-smoke in
your throat.

But. There it was. And Debby
thought she was mad, and the widow thought she had some kind of furtive illicit
liaison arranged, and the more they thought she was up to no good the more she
was determined to carry out this daring plan and prove the lot of them wrong.
The widow wanted to send a boy with the note, and that seemed sensible, save
that the widow did not personally know a sensible, reliable boy to send for,
and
Thomazine was hanged if she was going to trust a
letter that her darling had risen from his sickbed to write, into the hands of
some dirty little urchin they didn’t know from Adam who might throw it in the
river and run to the nearest pothouse on the proceeds.

(She was a
countrywoman, not a stupid one, and if they thought they had the monopoly on
gullibility in the metropolis, they’d never tried to buy a bolt of cloth in
Witham on market-day.) And after she had wrapped herself in her own plain,
sensible cloak and put Russell’s over the top of it, for there was not much
between them for height: after she had slipped on her stout pattens and her
thick woollen hood, and when there was little more than the gleam of her eyes
visible between the layers of plain dark wool - why, then, Thomazine was ready
to brave the darkness.

He was asleep, and
restless again, his breath catching between his teeth as he jerked on the
pillow. She kissed his forehead as she passed, but he did not wake. He did not
wake when she took one of his pistols from the clothes press, either. (She was
the daughter of a most well-respected officer of the old New Model Army, and
wife to another. Honestly, did he really think she was squalmish around
firearms?) Primed it, and slipped it into her muff. 

Money, she would not
take, for what she did not have could not be stolen. But she slipped that
letter on which all his hopes rested, in with the pistol, and crept downstairs.

London after dark was
a different, frightening place. This was the respectable end of the poor
quarter, and all the swathed and muffled bodies that jostled her were no more
than workmen and plain women returning home from a day’s labour, or from
marketing for the last of the day’s bargains, or from prayers at St Gabriel's.
Tired, hungry, aching people, longing for their beds and their boards - not
menacing predators, no matter how much they pushed and jostled.

And then she and
Debby were out of Aldgate, and all changed again, for she barely recognised the
bustling streets she saw by daylight in these shifting torchlit shadows.

Doors swinging open
on noise and blasts of heat and the stench of too many bodies in too small a
space, like doorways into hell. Beggars in alleyways, and what Thomazine hoped
was the glint of light on an open mouth, or the gleam of an eye. And what might
not be.

A brawl, that almost
spilled over her feet, and was cut off sharp.

She could smell the
river, that rich tidal silt of salt mud and decay. “Mistress,” Debby said close
to her ear, “Mistress Zee, are we anywhere close to, yet?”

And that poor lady
was near to weeping with fear, and yet they were barely a mile from home, and
not even across the bridge yet, and –

“Hell. And. Bloody.
Death
!”
she said, and would have stopped and stamped like a child, had she not wanted
to weep, or to throw herself headlong into the freezing mud and howl. A most
unmaidenly mode of expression, judging by Deb’s shocked intake of breath, and
yet a fully well merited one. For Thomazine’s own feet grew numb and cold, her
hands ached, her nose was running, and she was entirely, wholly, lost.

Well. Not lost, then.
She knew where she was. What she did not know, Russell, was where Master Pepys’
office
was, for they had never seen him in it, had they? They had seen
him at the Fighting Cocks tavern at Leadenhall, which was no use at all to a
woman and a maid, and so all this subterfuge had come to naught, and she could
have sat down and wept in the street for the waste of it.

For it mattered, it
mattered very much that this letter should be delivered, and not only because
its safe receipt mattered so very much to Russell. It was the first thing he
had trusted her with - the first thing
any
of them had trusted her with
- and if she could not do so simple a thing as hand over a note without
incident, she was not fit to be let out unattended. 

“Mistress?” Debby said
woefully, and Thomazine straightened her back.

“A little further,
Debs. We are to go to Birstall House, in Kensington. Sir Charles will see our
note of hand delivered, and let us see if you don’t get a look at how persons
of note -
other
persons of note and quality,” she amended quickly, “see
how they live!”

It was – what? four
miles? so far? to Kensington. And yet it was the longest journey of nightmare
she had ever known, dappled with creatures of darkness who loomed in her path,
and the smell of burning and disease everywhere about her.

In daylight, she told
herself, she knew these streets, and they were not full of monsters. (She sort
of knew these streets, then. She was not a regular haunter of the banks of the
Thames, and nor did she enjoy so much freedom here as she had known at home,
and she was beginning to flag a little at the unaccustomed distance. Not so
breathless that she could not chivvy the quivering Deb along with promises of
scenes of Lupercalian debauchery to make the neighbours stare, when she
returned.)

Not sure what was
worse: the stinking, bustling streets of the City, or the shadowy, deceptive
marble of Kensington, elegantly silent and menacing, where every dark house was
haunted. A cat who darted across her path might be the Witch of Endor, and
reduced Deb to frightened tears.

It came on for
midnight. She was sure of it. She could not even hear the chimes of a church to
tell her so, or the cry of a watchman, but she knew it, and he would be missing
her soon, would be worried, would send someone to look for her –

So, better make
haste, then, madam.

“No!” Debby said in
awe. “Mistress Russell you cannot mean it!”

“I assure you I do,”
she said firmly, and proceeded to drag her squawking maidservant up the great
moonlight-pale marble steps of Birstall House, with Deb protesting every step
of the way – their hair, their shoes, the state of their skirts –

“My lord Fairmantle,
if you please,” she said sweetly, and then out of the side of her mouth, “It’s
all right, Deb, they always look like that. Thankful said. He hires them for a
certain rigidity of expression. Heaven only knows what goes on in this house.”

Deb gave a horrified
whoop, and the butler gave her a stern look. “The Earl of Birstall is not at
home, madam.”

“Indeed,” Thomazine
said. She was of an unwomanly height and she had a prominent nose. That was
from her father’s side of the family. He’d made a career of using both to
intimidate, and she’d learned at his knee. She straightened her back and looked
down that prominent nose at the butler. “Indeed, sir. Then perhaps you would be
good enough to interrupt the Earl whilst he is not at home in the drawing-room,
and tell him that Mistress Russell would beg a few moments of his time on a
matter of some delicacy.”

“The Earl is not at
home,” he repeated. 

“Surely. I can hear
him not being at home with, I believe, Sir Charles Sedley, amongst others.
Although not my lord Wilmot, or I do not believe you would have the door open.
The monkey, Deb. The Earl of Rochester keeps an ape as a pet, and a horrible
little beast it is. If you leave doors open it has a habit of escaping, and
relieving its better nature behind the hangings. I do count the Earl as a
personal friend. I have dined in this house, with my husband.”

“I am aware of that,
madam. I mind the occasion well. The Earl is still not at home to callers.”

“Then I imagine I
must leave him a note, must I not?”

“He will not be at
home for some time, madam, and I –”

“Martin, the hell’s
going on out there? Send the bitch away!”

She bridled at the
coarse voice from behind the drawing-room door – not Sir Charles, not her
friend, surely? – and said, very loudly, “I beg your pardon, sir!”

“It’s not mine, you
slut, I won’t own it, and I won’t pay for it – Mistress Russell!”

Thomazine very slowly
withdrew her muff from under the enveloping layers of two heavy wool cloaks.
“It is already paid for, Sir Charles,” she said stiffly. “I fear you may be
under some illusion, sir. I am not here to importune.”

“Dear God, woman, I
thought you had – what on
earth
were you thinking, madam? Have your wits
gone wandering altogether? I thought you were a – what d’you
mean
by it,
eh? Wandering about in the dark, like a – has he not got any sense at all, that
addle-pated chap of yours? Gad, I should shake the sense into you! If you were
my daughter, madam, I can assure you I’d not – well? What d’ye say, then?”

“What I say, sir, is
that if you are so discourteous to all your callers as you are to me, I see we
have nothing further to say to each other!” She tossed her head, and she would
have gone – aye, and she would have wept, too, for he was her last hope and she
was disappointed in him – had he not put his hand on her arm.

“Oh, don’t be so
missish, Mistress Russell! I apologise, madam, but -!”

“Who ‘sit, Chas? She
going t’come in and entertain us?” Sedley drawled from the dimly-lit darkness.
“Got a lap wants filling, wench – she pretty, Chas? She got nice bubbies?” 

“Oh, bugger off,
Sid,” Fairmantle called back over his shoulder. “She’s a bloody washerwoman,
come to dun me.” 

“’Bout your level,
sir, tupping the menials!”

“Better that than the
ape,” Thomazine said quietly, and Fairmantle snorted – and repeated it, for
Sedley’s edification. “What d’you say to that, then, you whelp?”