‘Who would believe that she would let the house get into that state?’
‘I heard all the furniture was gone.’
‘What was she thinking of, I should like to know, letting that crooked preacher live with her?’
‘And when you think of Mistress Eleanor Hobie, such a kind and lovely lady! She helped me with my ague.’
‘And the daughter is sick in bed. No one knows if she’ll walk again.’
Then they would whisper very quietly, ‘And what about Coriander? Can you explain that one to me, my dear?’
And all would end up saying, ‘What would Master Hobie say if he were here?’
Then one bitterly cold night I was woken by Gabriel, who said that he had seen green flames coming from my house. I got dressed with all haste and went down to the shop. From the back window you could clearly see Thames Street, though nothing looked amiss.
‘Forgive me,’ said Gabriel. ‘I should not have alarmed you, though on my life I swear I saw green flames.’
‘I believe you,’ I said, and taking our cloaks we went out into the street. All was deserted. A thin veil of powdery snow lay undisturbed over the cobbles.
‘Who goes there?’ we heard someone call. ‘Is that you, Appleby?’
‘Yes,’ shouted Gabriel as the night watchman came into view.
‘Thought as much,’ he said, holding up his lantern. ‘And who is your companion?’
‘Coriander Hobie.’
‘And what brings you two out on such a night?’
‘I have seen flames coming from Thames Street,’ said Gabriel.
‘I have just come back from there myself. I saw them too,’ said the night watchman. ‘All most strange. But there is no fire, as far as I can tell.’
Snow had started to fall and I began to shiver and my teeth to chatter.
‘Come on with you both,’ said the night watchman kindly. ‘It is too cold to be standing out here talking.’
He took us back to his gatehouse and sat us down in front of a warm fire. ‘I tell you I will be a happy man to see daylight,’ he said, as he handed us two mugs of hot toddy and took once more to looking up and down Bridge Street. ‘I should not say this,’ he went on, ‘but I am mighty pleased to have your company, for this night has fair given me the frights, even set the hairs on the back of my dog to stand upright. Never seen him so affected.’
The dog lay by the fire looking towards the door, while his master told us what he had seen.
The night watchman had just called twelve o’clock when he heard the sound of a carriage coming over the bridge from the Southwark side. He went to have a look, for it was going at quite a lick and the street was slippery on account of the snow.
‘I have not seen so grand a carriage for a long time,’ said the night watchman. ‘It was pulled by four mighty handsome midnight black horses, and the coachmen wore red.’
‘Where did it go?’ I asked, feeling a chill run down my spine.
‘That’s what makes me think it must be the Devil,’ said the night watchman. ‘It vanished, didn’t it, as it got towards the City end of the bridge. God be my witness, for I do not tell a lie, it did not leave one mark in the snow, nothing to show it had ever passed. Now my missus, she’s one for believing in the fairies and all sorts, but not me. I have no time for that nonsense, though I tell you truly I can make not head nor tail of what I saw.’
With a beating heart I asked, ‘Did the carriage come back again?’
‘No,’ said the night watchman.
‘Did you see anything else?’ asked Gabriel.
‘A raven. That is what I saw, didn’t I?’ he said. ‘A monstrous great black raven flew after the carriage. It made my flesh creep. What do you make of that?’
What I made of it I could not tell him, for I felt too alarmed by all he had said.
‘Strange indeed,’ said Gabriel.
We were just saying our farewells when a constable appeared at the door. He too seemed most agitated.
‘Did you see green flames coming from Thames Street?’ he asked.
‘I did,’ said the night watchman, ‘and so did young Appleby.’
‘All most odd,’ said the constable. ‘I just came back from there, though I could see no sign of any fire. The neighbours said they had seen green flames, and a black carriage standing outside the house.’
‘Did you see the carriage?’ asked Gabriel.
‘No,’ said the constable, ‘and I do not think there ever was a carriage, for there were no wheel marks in the snow.’
We left the night watchman and the constable talking, and made our way back to the tailor’s shop. As we turned the door handle, I fair jumped out of my skin to hear the squawk of a bird. I turned round to see the raven fly away out over the river. Never had I felt more fear than I did then, for I knew, and had known the minute the night watchman had told us about the carriage, that its passenger was none other than Queen Rosmore, in search of the shadow.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Gabriel. ‘You look pale. Were you frightened?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It is just tiredness.’ And went back to my bed, though I did not sleep again. Instead I lay awake wondering what to do and knowing that time was running out. I had to get back to my house on Thames Street, but how?
I remembered my father saying that the river is never the same, that it is always changing, each tide bringing in the new, sucking out the old, though on the surface nothing seems altered. So it was with me. Just when I felt at my lowest ebb, when I knew not what to do, everything changed once more. For into Master Thankless’s shop came Danes.
And so the fourth part of my tale is told, and with it another candle goes out.
PART FIVE
23
Confessions
On the evening of Danes’s return, Master Thankless sent Nell out to buy one of Mistress Garnet’s venison pies.
‘Only the best, mind you,’ he said.
‘There is no need to go to all this trouble,’ said Danes.
‘Nonsense,’ said Master Thankless cheerfully, putting up the shutters and closing the door on the day’s business. ‘Today is a day for celebration, for you have come home to us.’
I could not let Danes out of my sight, worried that if I did she might disappear again. Master Thankless, seeing how anxious I was to talk to her alone, said, ‘Coriander, make yourself useful and show Mistress Danes to her chamber.’
I took her upstairs and we sat by the window overlooking the river.
‘What a beauty you are,’ she said. ‘You look so like your mother. Oh, my sparrow, it has been the longest and thinnest of times. I near lost heart that I would ever see you again.’
‘Where have you been?’ I asked.
Danes shook her head. ‘I went to France, then to the Netherlands, in search of your father. Alas, I never found him, but not for the lack of trying. Finally, I stumbled on Master and Mistress Bedwell. They offered to help, though when all is said and done there was little they could do, for they too were afraid to go back to London. By then I felt I had wasted too much time and all that concerned me was getting back here again. Travel, as you know, is not easy. Now, I have said enough. Just let us leave it be.’ She sighed and took my face in her hands. ‘More to the point, my little sparrow, where did you fly off to?’
Checking that we were alone, I whispered what I knew and for the first time in this world said the names that I had been keeping locked away in my heart. I told her about Medlar, about Tycho, Queen Rosmore, and Cronus. I told her about King Nablus and Unwin, the summer palace and the wedding. I told her of the liquid mirror and the shadow.
She shuddered. ‘I hate to think what would have happened to you if there had been no Medlar.’
‘Do you know anything about my mother’s past?’ I asked.
Danes turned away and looked out of the window. Then she said very quietly, as if the words came not from her but from the breeze, ‘I once saw her shadow.’
I felt t
he weather in me change, the heavy clouds lifting and breath filling my body once again.
When Danes told me what had happened three months before my mother died, it was as if a candle had been brought into a dark room, and I knew then, with a shock, that that must have been the time Rosmore first visited Maud.
She said that my mother was sitting staring at the ebony casket, certain that whatever was inside it had been stolen.
‘I was fair worried,’ said Danes. ‘At last she unlocked the casket, and I saw a great light shining from it. I was mighty fascinated, until your mother lifted out something that looked like a piece of gossamer that shone from her hands and then sank into her skin. She began to fade away. I screamed her name. Then I saw her pull the gossamer away from her and push it back into the casket.’
‘It was her fairy shadow,’ I said.
‘Your mother said the shadow had the power to take her back to the world she came from, and with all her heart she did not want to go. She told me that I had saved her by screaming. As if waking from a trance, she said she had seen the future. It seems that she had given the casket to your father on their wedding night, telling him to keep it safe and never give it back, or he would lose her. She made me promise to hold my peace, which I have done until now.’
‘I have to find her shadow and take it back to Medlar,’ I said. ‘Without it Tycho will be killed. The shadow has more power in it than can be left in the hands of charlatans like Arise and Maud.’
‘The one thing I know, my sparrow, is that your mother loved you and your father and never wanted to leave you. I have thought a lot about this, for it has been a mighty puzzle with so many pieces missing, and I think those silver shoes must have come from the other world. She was all for throwing them into the river, for she did not want you to have them, but like you I could see no harm in them.’
‘My mother was right,’ I said. ‘I have often thought that if I had let well alone, she might still be alive.’ And I felt tears well up and a lump in my throat.
Danes wrapped me in her arms and we sat there, both of us quiet, both of us thinking and listening to noises from the street: hawkers, the cries of the ferryman, the water wheels churning, and I felt the tide once more changing.
Downstairs in the parlour the table had been laid with a white cloth, a fire was ablaze in the grate and candles burnt brightly. We all sat down to a feast like kings and queens of old. When we had finished eating, Master Thankless took out his lute and we sang and danced and were as merry as if it were Christmas Day.
24
The Storm
Summer came on and the weather got steadily hotter until London seemed to be covered in a thick blanket of unbearable heat. All the windows of the shop and the living quarters front and back were open to let in what little breeze there was.
There had once again been an outbreak of the plague, as always when the weather is hot, and there was a panic that it could be as bad as last time. Danes told me it was truly dreadful, both her parents having died from it and she only being spared because she was working out in the wilds of the country.
Master Thankless took to going once a week to check the plague numbers that were printed out and put up in each parish. Every week the numbers rose and fear began to grip London. It had been foretold in no lesser book than the Bible that a great plague was coming, though I sensed that this was not it. Nevertheless, the rich and those with friends and relatives in the country took no chances. They locked their London houses and had carriages, carts and barges take them far away from the city.
‘Can one call this progress?’ said Master Thankless as we watched the endless procession trundle past his shop and across London Bridge. ‘Do you know that in good Queen Bess’s day carriages were almost unheard of?’ And he sighed as two coachmen screamed abuse at each other, both claiming they had right of way.
Every week the plague figures continued to rise. I had two hopes, one kinder than the other. The unkind hope, which almost became a prayer, was that Maud and Arise might be struck down with the deadly disease. The kinder one was that they would at least plan to leave London so that I could go back to the house.
It was not to be. Maud Leggs and Arise Fell stayed put like two ferrets in a hole.
Master Thankless said that the bridge was not a bad place to be because it had the luxury of a breeze. It was agreed that it would be best if we stayed together at least until the plague figures began to fall.
It was in the quiet days that followed that Hester told Danes the truth about Maud and Arise. When she had finished she looked mighty sad.
‘Do you think I will turn out like my mother?’ she asked.
Danes went over to her and took her gently in her arms as if she were a child. ‘There, there,’ she said. ‘Do not fret. You are the sweetest flower that ever grew on a dunghill.’
All this time I had been weighed down by skirts and all that was expected of young ladies. Months had passed and I had done nothing to get the shadow back. More to the point, I had no way of knowing what to do.
I told Danes that I could not stay still any more. I had to think of something. ‘I have let everyone down,’ I said.
‘Stop being such a ninny. You are not going to get anywhere if you think like that,’ said Danes, rolling up her sleeves. It was Wednesday, her day for baking, and she started kneading the dough as if it was an argument that would not listen to reason.
It was hot in the kitchen, with the kind of heat that makes you want to sleep. My eyelids felt heavy and a thought came to me. What if Arise knew that the silvery gossamer thing in the casket had power over Rosmore, and that with it he could bargain for anything he wanted? If that were so, he would use it to wheedle as much out of her as he could.
Danes dusted her hands so that a cloud of flour drifted slowly and lazily in the sunlight. She went over to a stoneware jug, poured two cool tankards of elderflower ale and set them on the table. ‘You are a sleepyhead,’ she said to me, smiling. ‘Come and sit yourself down.’
‘It is too hot,’ said Gabriel, coming into the kitchen. ‘My head is crackling.’
‘There is a storm in the air,’ said Danes, getting up to pour him a drink.
‘I wish I could borrow your clothes, Gabriel,’ I said without thinking. ‘If I were disguised as a boy I could go with you to spy on Thames Street. I could even get into the house from the river through the water gate.’
Gabriel laughed. ‘You, dressed as a boy, with all those curls!’
Danes looked at me. ‘It is not such a foolish notion.’
‘You are jesting,’ said Gabriel.
‘No, I am not,’ I said. My heart was now racing. Why, this was the salvation I had been looking for. Why had I not thought of it before?
‘No,’ said Gabriel. ‘It is too dangerous.’
‘Then I will go by myself.’
‘I will not let you,’ said Gabriel. ‘They will have you back in that chest with a knife through your heart for good measure.’
‘Now,’ said Danes, ‘we are all running away with ourselves.’
‘Why do you want to get back into the house?’ said Gabriel, taking no notice of her. ‘Surely you should be glad to be well away from it.’
‘I am. I am very pleased to be here. I would have been lost without Master Thankless. All the same there is something I need, something that belonged to my mother that must be returned to its rightful place.’
‘Let sleeping dogs lie,’ said Gabriel. ‘There is nothing left in that house. Most of the furniture has been taken.’
‘It is only a small casket,’ I said.
Gabriel stood up. ‘I am truly sorry for all that has befallen your family, but no good will come of your going back there,’ he said sharply. ‘Let it be.’
I remembered those words. My mother had said them to me long ago over my silver shoes. But it was not the end then and neither would it be now.
I was thinking how best to win my case when the room suddenly went dark, as
if the middle of the night was upon us. It was so gloomy that Danes lit the candles and pulled the windows to. Then there was a terrible rumble of thunder. The house shook and Nell came running down the stairs with her hands over her head to hide in fear under the table.
‘It is the wrath of God coming to get us,’ she whimpered.
I looked out of the window. Nature, I thought, could be more furious than any man’s quarrel when she wished. As I watched, the sky, dark as boiling brimstone, was lit up by a flash of lightning that streaked yellow across the river.
‘Where is Hester?’ asked Gabriel, suddenly anxious.
‘She has gone to take some baby gowns to Mistress Kent,’ said Danes. ‘She should be back soon. I told her I was baking her favourite seed cake.’
There was another crack of thunder and the rain began to fall.
‘I will go and fetch her,’ said Gabriel. ‘She should not be out in weather like this.’
‘Wait, for goodness’ sake,’ said Danes, ‘at least until the worst of the storm is over.’
‘Rain does not bother me,’ said Gabriel.
‘This ain’t rain,’ mumbled Nell, ‘this is the flood coming. We’re all going to be swept away.’
‘They are as good as married,’ said Danes as Gabriel left the room, and she took the seed cake from the oven, all golden and warm.
I went upstairs to help Master Thankless with the shutters. The tailor was standing in the doorway. The thunder rolled loud and low and the rain fell in draughtsman’s lines, hitting the cobbles before dancing up again. We watched it wash away the filth in the gutter. A carriage passed by, the driver soaked to the skin. People were running for cover and huddling in doorways, washing hung sodden between the two rows of houses and not one word could be heard, so loud was the noise of the rain. The storm had come without warning and the shopkeepers’ goods were stranded on the roadway. Pamphlets from the printer’s shop opposite had blown away and were floating in the puddles, the ink running and the words blurred.