Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune (30 page)

The square black carriage stood at the end of Salmon Lane, its lamps unlit. Two dark horses nodded in the traces and up top I could see the stooped shape of the driver. He didn’t even turn to nod at the sound of my heels tapping on the stones as we came alongside.

Tonight, for some reason, the lamp boy hadn’t lit the gas in this part of the lane. The globes were blind, like the windows of the waiting carriage. Now I was up close, I could see the curtains were pulled across inside. The only light on the cobbles was cast from the lamp carried by Tan Seng. The golden glow bounced off the lacquered sides of the carriage and showed that the wheels were felted over. Even the horses’ hooves were muffled with rolls of black cloth that reached up over their fetlocks like the woollen socks Nanny Peck used to knit in the winter.

Lucca’s hand tightened on my arm.

‘You cannot go alone, Fannella.’

Now the driver moved. He shifted about and the carriage creaked and bounced on its springs as he leaned over. He pointed down at me with his whip.

‘No one else.’ The rough voice was muffled by the scarf covering the lower part of his face.

Tan Seng raised the lamp. In the dim light he looked even older than usual.

‘It is always this way, Lady. We will be ready to welcome you, when you return.’ He bowed and gestured to the door. Lucca didn’t release me.

‘You can’t—’

‘I have to. It’s not a matter of choice. When I agreed to take on Paradise I agreed to this. It’s just a meeting.’ The words sounded hollow as they echoed in the deserted street. I turned to Tan Seng. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

The old boy bowed again, but he didn’t catch my eye. ‘We will be ready for you, Lady.’

Lucca muttered something in Italian. I pulled away and moved towards the carriage.

As I reached for the handle I paused. ‘You don’t . . . judge me, do you, Lucca?’

He glanced down. I saw him twist his fingers together and then he looked up.

‘You must do what you believe to be right. It’s all you can do. But I think,’ he stared at me, his eye round as an owl’s, ‘I think you are not playing a game any more, Fannella. After tonight you truly will be a Baron, whatever that means. You will be changed, tell me you don’t feel that?’

I didn’t have time to answer. The driver cracked his whip and the horses bucked and pranced, their hooves bumping on the stones.

‘It’s late.’ The muffled voice came down again. ‘We’ve a way to go.’

I stood back from the carriage. ‘And where, exactly, are we going? I think I’ve got a right to know that.’

I waited, but he didn’t say another word. I took a breath, caught the handle of the door, pulled it open and clambered up inside. The carriage rocked and jolted forward. The door swung shut as the movement jerked me back into the leather seat. It was black as a tomb in there. I felt to the side to pull back the curtains to let some street light in and to see where I was being taken.

‘Good evening, Katharine.’

My hand froze as the cracked, familiar voice sliced through the dark. A point of red glowed up opposite and of an instant my nose filled with the smell of her – disease and opium, foulness and sweetness coiled together.

I yelped as an invisible hand slammed suddenly and with a deadly accuracy across my right cheek. I felt the jewel from one of my grandmother’s rings cut deep into the flesh.

‘
That
is for The Gaudy.’

Of an instant another blow came from the dark, this time catching me on the left.

‘And
that
is for your brother.’

I brought my gloved fingers to my stinging cheeks, amazed the old witch had so much strength in her. Part of me wanted to lash out blindly and give as good as I’d just got, but another part of me whispered that I should bide my time. Lady Ginger never did nothing without a reason, did she? The last time I’d seen her it looked likely that the next trip she took would be to a churchyard pit, so why was she here?

I heard her cough in the dark. Moments later the end of her opium stick glowed again. As I became used to the darkness I began to make out a shape opposite. The red point moved and I caught the wet glint of her eyes. I felt for the cords securing the curtains.

‘I would appreciate it if you kept them drawn.’

‘How am I supposed to know where I am?’

‘You will know soon enough.’

Apart from the glowing tip of her stick and the occasional flash of a jewel, she was just a shadow. I dropped my hand into my lap.

‘Y . . . you said it was for Joey. Where is he?’

There was a sticky smack as she took the stick from her lips.

‘Where indeed?’

‘But I thought you—’

The hand lashed again. Something hard caught the point of my chin and I cried aloud.

‘You thought what, Katharine?’

‘That you’d know where he was. You have spies working for you everywhere, don’t you?’

The sucking noise came in the dark.

‘He is not in Paris. I know that much, so I must conclude that he is here. I understand he came to London with the woman to collect the child?’

‘You . . . you know? But you didn’t say anything about her – Della. You said . . . you
told
me that Robbie’s
father
was playing a dangerous game.’

‘Naturally. A Romanov prince married to a black woman? A prince, moreover, who has been forbidden to bear fruit? How could that not be dangerous – and to so many? Repeat to me the message I gave you, I wish to hear it from your lips again so that I can be very sure your brother did not misunderstand.’

‘
Bartholomew waits
– that’s exactly what I told him.’

The stick flared brightly for a second.

‘Then Joseph is the fool I suspected. Now listen to me and listen carefully. Tonight they will test you. No matter what happens do not react. Many people rely on you now, Katharine, and you must be strong. If the Barons do not find my choice to be worthy, they will move – and you and everyone you know will suffer. Do not mistake me.’

‘There you go again, you and Telferman together. You both have a lot to say, but you don’t tell me anything. You just crumble ideas into my head like you’re hand-feeding a chick.’

She didn’t answer. The opium stick glowed and dimmed a couple of times before she spoke. ‘Mr Pope tells us that a little learning is a dangerous thing, but he is mistaken. The more you know about the Barons, Katharine . . .’ she sighed. ‘I have tried to protect you, but tonight . . .’

She tried to swallow a cough. When she continued her voice came out on three wheezing notes at one time, like it was broken. She put me in mind of a boy who’d just scraped the first layer of fluff from his chin.

‘Have you never wondered how Paradise found its name? It is the land of plenty – a land of spices, silks, jewels, exotic creatures of bestial and human kind. We have fallen, but the wonders and riches of the world are crammed into the warehouses that huddle beside the Thames.’

‘And what’s that got to do with tonight?’

‘Tonight you will meet the men who run the City and, by extension, the men who rule the Empire. Your holdings, Katharine, are the gateway to the Empire. It is your strength and your weakness. Remember that, always.’

I ran my hand over my bag. Telferman’s notes were rolled inside. She was right about riches.

‘What about Queen Victoria then – and Mr Gladstone? Don’t they have a say in the order of things?’

Lady Ginger barked like a vixen. She laughed so loud I thought she might do herself a mischief.

‘P . . . puppets!’ She could hardly get the word out. It turned into another choking fit.

‘You thought your bravura display in the cage was a trial, did you not?’

I nodded in the dark as her shattered glass voice came again. ‘Did you not?’

‘Yes – it was a test. That’s what you said.’

‘It was a mere game compared to what is to come. Tonight you must give the performance of your life. It is always the way when a new Baron is invested. I have seen—’

She broke off as a deep rasping cough stole the words from her lips. I waited for her to finish. When nothing more came I asked, ‘What? What have you seen?’

‘Enough . . .’ The tip of the opium stick winked. We must have been passing down a well-lit street now. As the carriage bounced over a rut one of the curtains moved forward and I caught a sudden glimpse of her before the fabric shifted back. She was there for a moment and then she was gone – a tiny chalk-white face swaddled in a mound of furs.

My grandmother cleared her throat. ‘Enough to convince me that what I have done for Paradise was justified. Tell me, Katharine, was there a time when you thought of me as the Devil herself?’

Now she’d put the thought in my mind, it was difficult to shift.

‘We – we was terrified of you – all of us – if that’s what you mean. Even Fitzy.’ Tell truth, even now, she still put the fear into me. I couldn’t see her proper in the dark, but I could feel her. I said I reckoned I could sense something savage rolling off Della Lennox when she fought for her boy and it was like that now, here in the carriage. Disease riddled my grandmother’s body like colours through a ha’penny sugar stick at the fair, but the embers flickering in her soul could fire up a furnace.

‘Good!’ It was almost a whisper. Her sour opium breath filled the carriage as she exhaled. I began to feel a lightness in my head.

‘Take me as your pattern, Katharine. You cannot be their friend. Paradise is more than three theatres. They are merely a painted facade. Surely you know that now? You have responsibilities that weigh far heavier. You might dream of running Paradise in a new way, I dare say you would call it a fair way, but that is not possible. Not now, not while the Barons are circling.’

Her words put me in mind of Telferman. I’d no doubt he’d been reporting everything back, right down to the brand of soap I used to wash my hands and face of a morning. Truly he was a beetle, scuttling around in the skirting, living off dust. What was the point of Lady Ginger handing Paradise and everything in it over to me if all she was going to do was sit on my shoulder? Besides, it was a cess pit – it needed cleaning up, just like The Palace. I was always good with a mop – and she knew it.

I folded my arms. ‘What did you expect? That I’d just pick up where you left off?’ I shook my head and heard the beads in the tiny blue bird sewn to the veil of my hat rattle.

‘All that filth, all that corruption? It can’t go on like that. Don’t think I haven’t yet scraped the bottom of it, because I have – and what I found disgusted me. The little girls in Orchard Court? All of them under nine . . .?’

I waited for an answer that didn’t come.

‘That was well named, wasn’t it? All them children ripe for the picking by dirty old goats who were five times their age. Well, I put a stop to it. Three of them are training up to work in my halls now and a dozen more are at school. And I pay their board.’

‘Your halls?’ Lady Ginger began to laugh. The broken sound bubbled in the dark. ‘By my count you have just one left. Where will they all go now, Katharine? Where will they earn the fair wage you so foolishly promised? Where will those little girls you . . . emancipated work now?’

I clenched my fist. ‘I’ll see it all right, somehow. I’ll find them something. You said you knew me. If that’s true you knew how I’d go about it. Paradise is rotten as a tanner’s pit, but I can make it a better place.’

‘Can you? And do you think the Barons will accept that?’ Her voice was tight, like she was rolling something tart around her mouth.

‘They’re going to have to.’ I gripped the edge of the seat as the coach veered to the left. I flinched as a claw-like hand closed over mine. Even though she was less than a foot in front of me now, I still couldn’t see her face, but I could smell the tomb stench of her breath.

‘Do you never stop to consider for a moment that, once, I too might have wanted Paradise to be a finer place? That I might have tried—’ She broke off as the driver thumped twice on the roof overhead.

‘Already? We have wasted so much time. Listen to me, child . . .’ I blinked in the dark. My grandmother had never called me that before. ‘I chose carefully. Once I was chosen and now I have made my choice. The Barons always name their successor, it is the custom . . . but that person is tested as you will be tonight. They will be watching. You will be the only female in their number, Katharine, as I was. It is a dangerous path – walk carefully, traps will already be set. If you want to deal fairly for your friends and those you care for you must become cold and hard as a diamond.’

Her grip tightened.

‘Do you understand me?’

‘You mean I have to be like you?’

The clawed hand released mine and felt its way over my lap, climbing to my waist and up to my breast to rest over my heart.

‘You already are like me, Katharine, like the girl I was, but you will have to be dead here . . .’ her hand plucked at the ruffles of satin sewn down the bodice, ‘if you truly want to protect Paradise.’

There was a soft rustle as she leaned back into the seat opposite. A moment later she began to cough. I caught the faintest glint of her jewelled rings as she moved her hands to her mouth. I wondered if I should go to sit beside her as the choking rattled from her lungs, but she quietened and spoke again.

‘I fought so hard, for such a long time to keep the wolves from the gates. There are worse than me . . .’

We shuddered to a halt and I was thrown back into the padded leather. There was another rap on the roof and a click as the door opened. The carriage was flooded with light. I screwed up my eyes and leaned forward.

Outside a dozen foot away I could see two figures standing either side of an arched entrance. They both carried a flaming torch. Just above them there was a tall narrow building, timbered over and plastered in the old style. The uneven panes of the wide windows set in two rows overhead reflected the torchlight.

I turned to my grandmother and stifled a gasp at the shrunken face huddled in the furs. Her head shook slightly. There were open sores across her nose and cheeks and the scraps of grey hair that still clung to her head were scraped up into a mangy knot at the crown. Clots of rubies shivered from her ears. I thought about her making herself ready to come to me and all at once the jewels seemed ridiculous and defiant.