‘Do you not like me?’ she said very quietly. ‘Do – do you not want me?’
After the desolate horror of her dream, she longed for some human warmth, some show of affection. The darkness in the room gave her the courage to ask him for it.
‘Now, what would make you think that?’ He turned back with a laugh, as though he was teasing her, but his jesting was laced with bitterness. ‘You are young, you are rich, you are beautiful, but these are the least, the very least, of my reasons. I’ve wanted you ever since the first moment I saw you asleep in that chair by the fire.’
‘So . . .’
‘Oh, no!’ He shook his head as if ridding himself of a siren’s song. ‘Do not look at me like that! Your eyes are like storm clouds just before lightning strikes,’ he smiled. ‘I like lightning. I like to ride when a storm is threatening. I would love to spark the fire that lies within you, but I am a gentleman, Miss Sovay, whatever you may think. I would not take advantage.’ He sighed. ‘That pleasure will not be for me. Save your love for him, whoever he may be. You will meet him by and by.’ He gave a low, throaty laugh. ‘I’ll be devilish jealous, so make sure he’s good enough for you.’ He turned her face to his and stroked her cheek. ‘At one time, perhaps, it might have been me. I could have gone to your father and asked for your hand. I was not always the reprobate you see now. But it is far too late for that. What would I say to him? I earn my living by highway robbery, my prospects are the gallows?’ He turned away. ‘Do not grow fond of me. I am warning you. I do not know how much time there is left to me. There is no romance in the life, Sovay. Leave that to the songs and plays.’
‘You could give it up! You could –’
‘Do what? It is all I know now. Do not mistake me. I live like this because I choose to do so. I would not have it other. A short life and a merry one, is that not what the pirates used to say?’
‘But if they catch you, they will hang you! You said it yourself!’
‘That is so. It is only a matter of time. Life on the road is short and I’ve lived out my span many times over. They will catch me and hang me, as you say. When they do, I hope you will shed a tear for me.’
‘I don’t want to. I want to –’
‘Save me? Like Toby? And t’other one, Skidmore? And Gabriel and his friends in Clerkenwell? And how many more? You cannot save them all, Sovay. Not with all your money. Not with all the money in the world.’
‘So you do not believe that we should help people? Or try to change things if we can?’ Sovay pulled away from him, her pent-up passion spilling into anger. ‘That we should not want things to be better?’
‘That is not what I said, nor is it what I believe, but it is harder than you think to change one person, let alone the whole world. Take Toby . . .’
He broke off, reluctant to say more, angry with himself for saying anything at all but she had a way of provoking him. The kindness she showed, her generous heart, these were things that he admired. She seemed to care little for birth or station. What was she doing here else? And she did not judge others by those measures. He did not want to attack her for the ideals that she held. It was not her fault that she was young, had never known hunger or want, or been shown anything but loving kindness. He could not criticise her for that, but if she was going to stray from her world into his, she should see that world for what it was; to do otherwise was to invite disaster.
‘Toby? What about him?’
‘Nothing,’ he said and stood up.
‘Tell me!’
‘Very well, since you insist.’ He looked down at her. ‘Mother Pierce’s place has been raided. Everyone in there arrested, apart from her. By the time the runners arrived, she’d made herself scarce.’
‘I told him to stay away from her.’
‘I fear he did not heed your advice. You can’t keep those lads out of the Garden. It’s the nearest thing to a home they’ve ever known. I heard he was taken along with his friends.’
‘Taken? You mean, to prison?’
‘That’s what I’d think in the ordinary run of things, but the rumour in the street is that Dysart is involved. Ma Pierce has traded her precious charges and Toby has been taken with the rest of them to a place called Thursley.’
‘Thursley?’ Sovay frowned. ‘How strange. I’m going there myself this very weekend.’
‘You are going to Thursley?’ Greenwood could not have looked more surprised if lightning had, indeed, struck him.
‘Yes, Dysart is holding a party and has invited me.’ Sovay was puzzled. ‘But it is all perfectly respectable, as far as I know. What would he want with Toby and those others? I don’t understand.’
‘As far as you know! You know nothing! As for understanding . . .’ He made a gesture of despair. ‘What a sheltered life you have led. What do you think he would want with them? Use your head.’
‘Oh,’ Sovay coloured. ‘Surely not!’
‘Oh, yes. I’m afraid so. Worse, in fact.’
‘What could be worse?’
‘Dysart and his kind. They are evil people. More evil than you could possibly imagine. You think that they are opposed to liberty. Not at all. You misunderstand them. They are libertines. They believe they have the right to do anything they like, with anyone they like, to anyone they like. They believe there should be no limits set upon an individual’s freedom, but only for them, for their small circle. Not for anybody else. Others have been taken there, for these parties of his, and they have not come back.’
‘You mean he kills them?’
Greenwood looked down at her, his face brooding and solemn. ‘I do not like to talk to you about these things, but since you force me. From what I’ve heard, death comes as a mercy.’ He paused, considering, choosing his words carefully. ‘I do not think you will be in danger of this kind of corruption. He likes to keep these dealings secret, known only to a few. They see street boys and girls as there to be used and discarded; they would not prey upon someone of their own class. Even so,’ he shook his head, ‘for you to even consider going there seems like madness to me.’
‘I will not be alone. Hugh will be with me and Gabriel will be our driver. There will be others, too. Anyway, now I have to find Toby. Whatever you say, I feel responsible for him. It is another reason for me to go.’
‘I have never known anyone so stubborn or foolhardy.’ He leaned over and kissed her forehead. ‘It is almost morning. Get what sleep you can.’
Greenwood returned to his chair, but he did not sleep. If he could not stop her from going there, then so be it. He would let Dysart find him. He would contrive to be there, too.
CHAPTER 21
The light was fading as Gabriel whipped up the horses, urging them on to Thursley. The way they took was lonely. On the map, Thursley seemed little distance from London, but its setting was wild and isolated. There were few settlements near it and they were crossing bleak heathland broken by frowning coppices. The coach rocked and rattled from their violent pace and outside the wind was rising, tearing at the summer leaves of oak and beech.
Sovay rode inside the coach with Hugh. When Lady Bingham arrived to collect her, she would be gone. Hugh touched her arm, pointing to a great arched gateway. High walls extended to the left and right as far as the eye could see. They were entering Thursley.
The gravelled road took a winding course between rolling grounds and dense, dark woods. Far below, lay the fat curve of the Thames in milky brown swollen flood. They rounded a bend and Sovay felt Hugh’s hand on her arm again.
‘There it is.’ He pointed in a kind of excited wonder and ordered Gabriel to stop the coach.
Thursley Abbey lay in front of them at the end of a great avenue of trees. Sovay stared, as amazed as Hugh. She had never seen a private dwelling of such size. Compton could have been tucked behind just one wing and completely hidden from view. This was not a house; it was on the scale of a duke’s castle or a royal palace. Different-sized turrets and towers serrated the sky, sprouting square, round and pointed, from a
n extraordinary complexity of buildings that spread out in four arms around a great central tower which showed like a thick finger of darkness, against the dull red glare of the western sky. Black birds, crows perhaps, or rooks, cawed and whirled like flecks of ash around its castellated and pinnacled summit. Tall lancet windows pierced the walls at different levels. The building seemed archaic in the extreme, a vision of some time long distant and altogether forgotten.
It was a strange place. The proportions were all wrong, as though it had been made from parts of other buildings that did not quite fit together. It lay sprawled in the landscape like some monstrous creature, some brooding, heraldic beast, all crests and spikes, with the head of one thing and the tail of another. Whatever its aesthetic oddities, it undoubtedly had power. It was the kind of place that, once seen, was never forgotten. Sovay knew, almost by premonition, that she would revisit it in her dreams.
‘You shivered.’ Hugh looked at her with concern. ‘Are you cold?’
‘No,’ Sovay shook her head. ‘It’s just . . .’
‘I know what you mean,’ Hugh agreed. ‘It is enough to give one the shivers. One man’s vision,’ he gave a nervous laugh, ‘is another’s phantasmagoria.’
Sovay nodded. She felt a powerful jolt of homesickness for Compton, its plain, four-square elegance, the warm tones of its dark, honey-coloured stone. She longed to tell Gabriel to turn the carriage around and take them all back there but knew that was impossible. Compton was no longer a place of peace and safety and never would be again if Dysart had his way.
Gabriel cracked the reins and the horses trotted on down the Great Avenue which ran between straight rows of tall beeches to the entrance of the house.
As they got closer, the scale of the place became clearer. Sovay looked out of the window and pulled her travelling cloak round her as the coach entered the long finger of shadow cast by the central tower.
Hugh handed Sovay out of the carriage and Gabriel passed down the luggage. He would not be waiting around; he had other business. He whipped the horses up and wheeled away. Hugh and Sovay were left standing in front of doors that seemed out of any human scale. Impossibly tall, they were suspended from eight massive, ornate hinges and were made from oak beams the length of forest trees. The surrounding stone architrave was ornately carved and soared upwards, curving steeply to a point. The shield at the apex was so high above them that it was impossible to make out the coat of arms blazoned there.
Hugh pulled on a twisted wrought-iron handle and a bell tolled, doleful and deeply sonorous, sounding funereal and ominous. While they waited for someone to come, Hugh ran his hand over the grey stonework on either side of the entrance.
‘It is not made of real stone,’ he said.
Sovay leaned forward to look more closely. ‘It looks like stone to me.’
‘Well, it isn’t. I’ve seen real gothic buildings on my tours with Fernand. This is most probably a timber frame, covered in some concretion, rendered and marked to look like true masonry. That is how he has been able to build so quickly and so massively. Nothing is as it seems here.’ He stepped back and looked upwards, his brow clouded. ‘How can such materials support this massive tower?’
Just then, there was the sound of some kind of mechanism and the doors slowly yawned open. For a moment, Sovay could see no one. Then she looked down. The man who had opened the impossibly tall door for them was himself very small. No taller than a child of six or seven. He was in immaculate livery and, despite his diminutive size, he had strong arms and powerful shoulders. His face was broad, with wide cheeks and a spade-shaped nose. The empty cruelty of his dark, tilted eyes smothered any possible amusement at his size.
‘Can I help you?’
‘We are here at Sir Robert Dysart’s invitation,’ Hugh announced. ‘Mr Hugh Middleton and Miss Sovay Middleton. If you would kindly announce us.’
He said nothing to this, merely nodded to two equally diminutive footmen who stepped out smartly to collect the luggage. The butler ushered them into a vast entrance hall. It was like stepping into a cathedral. The wooden roof soared to at least seventy or eighty feet; the embossed shields on the great cross beams made as small as studs by their distance from the ground. The tall, pointed stained-glass windows set into walls must have been splendid with daylight falling through them, but had grown opaque and dull with the setting of the sun. Fat candles set into brackets and huge candelabras suspended from the ceiling provided wavering pools of yellow light.
Darkness crept in from the sides and the great expanse of stone made the room discomforting, cold and drear. Sovay was not normally superstitious, but the hollow boom of the great wooden door shutting behind them sounded like an ominous warning that they would never get out of here. She had to will herself to keep walking across the vast stone-flagged floor that seemed wider than the courtyard at Compton. She would happily face any physical danger, but this place unnerved her. A great flight of steps led up towards a narrow archway which exactly mirrored the entrance.
The arch led through to an octagonal area which lay under the Great Tower. The butler indicated that this was where they should wait. Sovay looked up at the soaring pillars, the tall arches and pointed windows. Crimson curtains, at least fifty feet long, hung down from the upper galleries. They rippled a little, disturbed by a breeze or some movement, the material lifting for a second to show dark spaces, adding an air of mystery, a sense of areas hidden from view. A great eight-sided brass lantern spun very slowly, swinging and twisting in the passage of air. The light gleamed through painted glass panels and intricate filigree to produce richly coloured, undulating patterns of light. The effect was faintly oriental and oddly disconcerting. This was by far the strangest place that she had visited in her life.
It was designed to overmaster the visitor, to make one feel like Jack in the giant’s castle. Hugh reached for her hand and held it tightly.
‘It is like an ogre’s fortress,’ he said, echoing her thought. ‘And we are like two children who have wandered in from the woods. Look there.’ He pointed upwards. ‘Do you see them? He’s even got bats.’ Sovay had not noticed them before. The creatures swooped near and sheered away from the great lantern, flitting and fluttering above them like little flaps of silk. ‘At first I was reminded of a cathedral but I have a feeling that there is nothing that is holy here.’
‘What do you think will happen?’ she asked.
Hugh shrugged. ‘I have no idea. Best not to anticipate. We will take obstacles as they come and deal with each one.’
They were whispering more from the lingering feeling of being in a church than from any fear of being overheard, but high above them Dysart leaned on the balcony smiling to himself. The acoustics were such that anyone in the Listening Gallery could hear every word spoken in the Octagon. He often made visitors wait there. He liked to hear their first impressions, the whispered mixture of awe and fear that the building had the power to instil. He had no intention of going down to greet his guests. He didn’t even want them to know he was here. He nodded to Meldron, his diminutive butler, who returned down the spiral staircase.
The servant returned to Sovay and Hugh and indicated that they should follow him. They went under an arch surmounted by a music loft and into a vestibule that led to a long gallery. After the cold emptiness of the Entrance Hall and Octagon, the prospect made Sovay stumble and catch her breath. The room disappeared into the distance, door after door opening onto magnificent opulence. The ceiling was covered with rich and elaborate fanwork that sprang like slender branches from exquisitely worked corbels, each carved with the face of an angel. The floor was carpeted in richly patterned blue and red; the walls were covered in pale crimson damask. The room was lit by hanging lamps and candles set in silver sconces. Their soft light gleamed on mahogany bookcases filled from floor to ceiling with rare volumes. Renaissance paintings glowed with jewel-like colours: young men in caps of emerald velvet and ruby red tunics; magi in pearly capes knelt to Madonnas cloa
ked in costly ultramarine. Stands made of exotic materials were spaced at intervals. They bore rare objects: an oval cup carved from rock crystal, a golden box covered with birds, a great nautilus shell, beautifully engraved and mounted on silver, a cup carved from topaz with a ruby-eyed dragon handle of pale yellow gold.
The effect on the eye was dazzling, an excess of riches which made it difficult to know what to look at. Each thing spoke of beauty, rarity, incredible wealth.
At length, the butler turned right and pushed back a pair of lofty folding doors. They entered a room, no less fine, but smaller, more intimate in size. A circular table in the centre gleamed with glass and silver.
The butler ushered them forward and then looked up to address them. ‘My master regrets that he cannot meet you at present. He has many things that claim his attention. Meanwhile, he hopes that you will be comfortable.’
He eased a chair back for Sovay and then for Hugh. He poured wine for them both and then he disappeared.
The table was sumptuously set. A plate of sorrel soup with eggs steamed before them and there was a chicken set in aspic, trout and salmon, celery with cream and stuffed artichokes. On a sideboard stood a pyramid of fruits and sweetmeats: a pineapple crowned layers made up of fresh grapes, dates, figs and oranges, candied apricots, mandarins and ginger, marrons glacés, marchpane leaves, comfits and sugar almonds coated in gold and silver leaf.
‘It is strange,’ Sovay said as she dipped her spoon into the soup. ‘The food is ready and warm, as though we were expected, and in quantities enough for a whole party, yet the table is set for two.’ She put her spoon down and shivered. ‘I still feel as if I’m in a story.’
Hugh dipped his own spoon and tasted. ‘Well, this is real food and I am hungry.’ He broke a small white roll and took a bite. ‘Come. Eat. We are not in the realms of fairy, Sovay, whatever the evidence to the contrary.’
The butler reappeared the instant that they had finished.
‘Perhaps you would follow me,’ he said, opening the doors for them.