A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (4 page)

No, he wanted
her to see Four Ashes, and she would, and they would be happy. And Fly-Fornication's
joyless spirit would turn in its grave, and there was a little of malice in it
too, that his sister would have gibbered in godly fury at his vanity and
vainglory.

Roses, he
thought drowsily. He would fill their garden with roses, with the most fragrant
roses his pocket might command, that Thomazine might always have rose petals
beneath her feet. Well, might fill one of those rather nice Chinese porcelain
jars with them, to scent the air with summer all the year round, because lovely
though they were he could see damn-all use to the things else. They had been
too pretty to leave in a warehouse on the rancid Thames, though it had cost him
most of an afternoon drinking very nasty coloured water that claimed to be
China tea with the merchant, being flattered into parting with a scandalous sum
of money. Wondered what Thomazine would make of tea. He thought it was
horrible, actually, no matter what the great and the good might think, and it
deserved to be kept in its elaborate gilt cabinet with the locked doors. Nobody
in their right minds would want to drink the damnable stuff, and he had
promptly slipped off back to his shabby lodgings in Aldgate for a mutton pie
and a sensible mug of ale that tasted of something. And had not been asked back
into polite society twice, which had not troubled him.

A future filled
with warmth, and joy, and sunlight, and a place in the world. And a girl who
loved him, and - he moved her hand, carefully, from her possessive grip on his
backside - for some unfathomable reason of her own, desired him.

What more could
a man wish for?

He was almost
asleep, and thinking of nothing more useful than the comfort of the soft
breathing weight of her in his arms, when he heard the first scream.

7

He came bolt upright with a scream of
his own, and Thomazine came upright with him though she was barely awake, and
he could smell smoke -

"Fire,"
he said, no more than that, with every hair standing up on his neck and the
flesh cringing on his bones. "
Tibber
," and he took her by the
shoulders and he shook her till her head lolled on her shoulders and her
eyelashes fluttered and she would not wake, she murmured and blinked but she
did not wake, and he could smell smoke, smell meat roasting, hear the crackle
of flames and the warm orange glow of firelight under the door, he could hear
raised voices and running feet on the stairs, the roar of the flames and the
first splintering crash as the windows -

"Wha'?"
she said drowsily, and he was half out of bed and pulling her with him,
dragging her by the arm across the crumpled sheets  -

"Fire!"

The wench was
heavier than she looked, deadweight, and she pulled her arm free and blinked at
him sleepily, "What?"

"There's -
fire!"

The ragged
muscle in his cheek gone stiff and twitching with panic, even now, and he could
barely speak so that she could understand, but it didn’t matter because she was
a little more awake, shaking her head and pushing her hair out of her eyes,
yawning. 

"Russell,
what?"

"No.
Time!"

And she
resisted, she would go nowhere, and it was all he could do now not to drag her
by main force across the bed and throw her over his shoulder -

"Smoke!"

"There's no
smoke," she said, perfectly calmly. "Russell, you're dreaming."        

"I heard
-"

“It’s all
right,” she said, and he half-believed her, and she shook his arm until he
looked at her. “
Thankful
. It is all right. It’s –“ 

Well, it wasn’t
all right, clearly it wasn’t all right, whatever it was, as another yowl of
bloodcurdling ferocity split the air and Thomazine’s eyebrows rose. “Well, it’s
just noisy, then,” she said firmly. She opened the door a crack as a further
set of footsteps went thumping down the landing. “See? Mama? What’s amiss?”

The sight of Het
Babbitt on the shadowy landing, as plump and four-square as a little hedgehog
in her stout flannel nightgown, was oddly comforting. “Nothing, dear,” she said
blithely. “There have been babies a-plenty born under this roof before, and I
imagine there will be plenty more to come. Everything proceeds as it should.
And really, Thankful, to be so squalmish – I recall you standing in that very
doorway when Joyeux was born, dear, you are no stranger to childbirth.”

She gave a fond,
reproving shake of the head. “Now, young lady, I am needed elsewhere, for I
very much suspect you will be an auntie again by dawn. Go back to bed,” and she
smiled, “the both of you. Your father is gone for the midwife, Zee, so I am
sure there will be much commotion shortly, and if I know your father he will
have the house about its ears on his return. He has never been one to panic
quietly, the dear man."

She smiled
again, and evidently dismissed her new-married daughter, who stood in no want
of assistance, from her immediate thoughts, as she pottered down the landing
towards the stairs. Thomazine closed the door again, firmly. 

“There, now, you
see? We are not besieged, the house is not falling – “

She was
laughing, and he was not. In his head, he knew that he was in a place of
safety, with the woman he loved, and that all was well. In his heart –
- a woman screaming, the sound of hoofbeats crashing on the stone flags of
the yard, the leap and flare of firelight –

“Russell?”

He shook his
head. “Come back to bed,” she said gently, “you are shaking with cold, lamb.”

Not cold, but
fear, and he hated it, all the more for knowing it was not real, that he was
afraid of a phantom in his own head.

His mouth was
very dry, and his marred cheek stiff as wood, but he choked down the bile in
his throat and said, “My.
Sis.
Ter.”

And his voice
was slurred, odd, and she glanced at him with a look of understanding. And
crossed the room again, barefoot and tall and slight and radiant as a white
candle, to squat on her haunches in front of the dying fire and shake the jug
of spiced ale that had been left there, and to pour the last of it and offer it
to him wordlessly.

He didn’t taste
it, but the warmth of it eased his cheek a little, and eased the shivering cold
in his bones, and he swallowed it gratefully. 

Thomazine set
the jug back in the ashes, though it was all but empty now, and perched herself
on the bed, cross-legged as a tailor.

He was awake,
now. He could not see Thomazine with her skirts blazing around her, or her
loose hair burning like the tail of a comet. He could not smell roasting meat,
or imagine the shattering roar as the roof fell in to obliterate her dear body
under a ruin of charred wood and broken glass. “Four Ashes burned,” he said
softly, his voice under control again, now. “That much, you know. Well. My
sister burned with it. She was in the house.”

She nodded
encouragingly.

“I. Dream of it,
sometimes.” And thought, but did not say, that sometimes it was not Fly he saw
in his dreams, but other people, the people he loved. Burning. Always burning,
and begging to be saved, and he was always standing outside. Standing in the
thin rain of a Buckinghamshire winter night, with the heat on his face, and the
whirling sparks like scarlet snow, and the roar and whoosh of collapsing
timbers.

Thomazine
touched his hand, and he snatched at her fingers and held them, hard, and in
his head he was pulling her free from the falling timbers. Too hard, he
thought, for her level brows drew together in a tiny wince. He was sorry for
it.

“Yes,” she said.
No more than that. “I imagine you would.”

And then, after
a little pause, she freed her hand and linked her fingers through his, that he
might not squeeze them quite so hard any more. “I’m sorry, Russell. I don’t
think I have said that before. I am truly sorry.”

And he was
tired, and his head was beginning to ache with lack of sleep, and so he was
honest, and he said, “I’m not, tibber.”

He thought she
might be shocked. She took a little sharp breath, but then she glanced up and
looked both sad and angry at once. “I am sorry for
you
, love. Not her.”

“No one deserves
to die so,” he said softly, and it was the first time he had said as much,
aloud, and the closest he had yet come to forgiveness. “No matter how vile a
sinner they may be. No one deserves that death. I am sorry she died so hard. I
am not sorry she died, and I cannot find it in my heart to mourn her.” 

Thomazine’s
gilded russet lashes dipped, and she said nothing. The house was still again,
so still that you could hear the murmur of voices, in the room at the end of
the landing, and the creak of floorboards where Frannie Pettitt was walking to
and fro to ease the pain of bringing a new life into the world. (Or perhaps it
was her husband, for Luce had ever been an anxious young man, and not grown
less so with middle age.)

So still that
the disconcerting, all too audible grunting snarl from the far chamber made
Russell jump and blink, imagining the worst. And made Thomazine smile at his
discomfiture, for being a woman she had more knowledge of these matters than he
did. He stared at her, wide-eyed, and she leaned forward till her forehead
touched his. “What was it you always used to say to me,” she said gently, “ -
all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well?”

 - as if
she were the older of the two of them, and he nodded, slowly, reassured, for if
Thomazine said a thing would be so she would move heaven and earth to make it
so. “All proceeds as it should, Russell,” she said, and disentangled his hand
from hers and pushed his loose, fear-sweaty hair out of his eyes. “Come back to
bed, and be comforted.”

8

Frances Pettitt was the lighter of a
daughter, by dawn, and the house was buzzing like an upturned ant's nest.

Het was crumpled
and teary-eyed, reminded of her own babies, all grown up now, and she said the
little mite was the loveliest thing she had ever seen. Uncle Luce said he had
half a mind to have the child christened Rosamund, the Rose of the World. And
Thomazine's father, who looked a little misty-eyed himself, muttered darkly
that he'd only ever thought Luce had had half a mind at the best of times, and
to give the poor little mite a sensible name, in all charity.

"Like
Thomazine, you mean?" Luce said tartly, bouncing the little bundle of
spotless drapery in his arms, and the infant gave a tiny mew, like a sleepy
kitten, and nestled against her father.

She caught her
father's eye, and he smiled, and scratched at his cinnamon stubble. "I'm
happy with Thomazine," he said softly. "Now, lass, I'd never have
suspected that man of yours of idleness. Is he likely to appear before
breakfast, to admire this child prodigy?"

She had left him
sleeping, as it happened. Did not know what he might make of a new baby,
whether he would turn sentimental, or be timid, or distant. Did not, in all
truth, know if he liked children or not, for themselves, and not as merely a
means to continue a name. There was a deal she did not know about Thankful
Russell.

- had not known
his given name was Thankful-for-His-Deliverance, until yesterday, for one
thing, and the memory of that rather ludicrously godly and well-concealed
Christian name lightened her mood suddenly. But yes. She had known him all her
life, and yet there was still so much she didn’t know about him. Well, this was
one thing she could discover for herself.

"A
what?" he said muzzily, without opening his eyes.

"A baby.
Uncle Luce's baby. She -"

He sat up then,
and slithered out of bed just as he was, as bare as an egg, and gone casting
about the room for his clothes, and ended by bounding downstairs barefoot, a
solitary stocking trailing anyhow from his pocket. "
She
? He has a
daughter? Oh, bravely done, Frances! About time!"

- He liked
children, then, she thought, following in his wake. And the baby, being a
matter of hours old, and not objecting at so tender an age to being passed from
pillar to post like a little parcel, had not been frightened by his marred
cheek, but had simply lay cuddled in the crook of his arm and looked up at him
with unfocussed blue eyes.

Russell had
looked at Thomazine, and Thomazine had looked at Russell, and an unspoken
understanding had passed between them. And she had not cared who might see the
look of dazed joy on his face, or the tenderness on hers.

It was a fragile
understanding at best, though, and not the sort of thing that could be shared
in a room full of people, and a nursing mother upstairs, and all the talk of
the new one's beauty - how she might have Luce's height, such long legs for a
tiny wee one, and wasn't she a sweet poppet, and did you see, so young, and she
smiled, truly she did, and did you think she would be dark like her mammy or
fair like her father -