Secret Lament (5 page)

I walked on, glancing behind me, listening for a rush of footsteps. We were coming into the darker part of town now; half a dozen men might be hiding in the alleys for all I knew, to spring an
ambush. I glanced down one of the alleys – and quickly stepped into it.

Someone had abandoned an old spade against a wall. The blade and the handle had parted company and the blade fell over with a clatter as I snatched up the handle. I pressed back into the shadows
of the doorway, awkwardly trying to protect the violin on my back.

The footsteps were quickening, faster, faster, until they were almost running. I held my breath, gripped the spade handle.

Here he was, swinging into the alley in a panicking rush. I caught a glimpse of his face as I swung. Yes, it was the same man. Then he went down in a heap, hands clutching at his head where the
handle had cracked against it.

I vaulted over his prone body and hurried on to the High Bridge. His groans followed me. I had not killed him then, which was a relief. But perhaps I had taught him I was not as defenceless as
he had thought.

Perhaps.

My lodgings were eerily quiet when I walked in. Only a few months ago, there would have been the chatter of Mrs Foxton, my landlady (a spirit of many years standing) and the
seamstress in the back room on the ground floor. But death, alas, paid a visit and the seamstress collapsed and died in Brewer’s shop, amongst all the bales of cloth and silks and lace. An
ideal place for a seamstress to die, you’d think, but I’ve heard that she plaintively sends messages backwards and forwards to my landlady until all the other spirits are sick of it.
I’ve hardly had a word out of Mrs Foxton since, except when the rent’s due.

My room is on the second floor; as I pushed the door open, something caught beneath it. A note, folded and sealed, with a great grimy fingerprint in one corner. I lit a candle, locked the door.
Automatically, I lifted the mattress to check that the little bag of coins was still there. It was. I must make a decision soon about where to invest it – it was hardly in a safe place
here.

The note was from my great friend, the dancing master, Hugh Demsey, and was dated two days previously. I have known Hugh since we were in petticoats, and over the past years he has been in many
a scrape with me, though never more so than in the last year. Not long since, Hugh was shot while we were attempting to apprehend a murderer and he has only recently recovered his full health. He
was still apparently in Houghton-le-Spring, which is tolerably near to Durham.

Thank God the seal had been unbroken. I had told Hugh to keep my good fortune private. And if the ladies and gentlemen of Houghton-le-Spring knew their dancing master’s opinion of them,
they would look for a new teacher.

I scanned the rest of the letter briefly. Hugh was a wicked observer of weaknesses and told a good tale but I was in too much of a hurry at the moment to read his stories properly. One thing
that did catch my attention was the last paragraph.

That clearly explained the grimy fingerprint. I put Hugh’s letter in a book for later detailed perusal, and blew out the candle. I was more than half inclined to go out again and patrol
the back of Esther’s house in case the intruder returned. But the household was on the alert now and if it had been an opportunist burglar he surely would have realised that the house was too
stoutly defended.

The ruffians decided me. When I crawled across the bed, to draw the curtains aside and look out, I saw two men across the street, lounging against the wall. One was smoking a pipe. They were
standing directly under a lantern and must have seen my curtain move for they looked straight up at me and grinned. I let the curtain drop. To go out again would simply get myself in trouble and
not help Esther in the least.

Oddly, as I lay sleepless in bed, it was Hugh’s letter that preoccupied me. Mazzanti was ‘not a man with many Friends’ he had said, implying that he was a man with a number of
enemies. I still had quite not decided whether that shot had been intended for me or for Mazzanti. Was Mazzanti really in danger of his life? The previous shootings, in London, had suggested so, if
Julia Mazzanti was telling the truth of course. I felt an obscure guilt; Mazzanti’s death would make my life a great deal easier for I would be in possession of my old post and the money that
went with it.

I turned over to make myself more comfortable. To acknowledge such self-interest was not to wish Mazzanti dead.

I wondered who did.

I think there is no better place for company than this town; there are some very genteel people here.

[Letter from Lady Hubert to her sister-in-law, on visiting Newcastle upon Tyne, May 1732]

I slept surprisingly well although the June sun woke me earlier than I wished. I lay in bed staring at the dim ceiling and the line of bright sunshine that lay across the room,
sliding in through the gap where the curtains did not quite meet. Sometime in the night I had thrown off my blanket, and it lay in a rumpled heap on the floor.

I dragged myself out of bed and splashed cold water from the bowl over my face. Was Esther all right? Had the burglar made another attempt to break in? I thought of sending a message by the
spirits but that was out of the question; my interest in Esther would be all over the town in seconds; nothing moves faster than information amongst the spirits. I would have to make the enquiry in
person.

Half an hour later, hastily dressed and unshaven, I was standing at Esther’s door, learning from a yawning Tom that nothing untoward had happened. Mrs Jerdoun, he said, was breakfasting in
her room. Did I want to go up?

I did. I said, “No,” and made a hasty exit.

A flutter of white caught my eye as I turned, a flash of yellow. Like ribbons. I swung back.

Tom had already shut the door.

Perhaps I had caught a flash of sunlight reflected from the door as it closed. It had reminded me of the girl last night and the glimpse I had had of Julia Mazzanti in that other world. And
hadn’t the Julia of my own world been wearing yellow ribbons too, yesterday at the rehearsal?

The sun was as yet very low but already very hot. As I walked down to the Sandhill, near the Keyside, I kept to the shady sides of the streets, cut through alleys where the sun never penetrated,
dodged through back yards of houses and shops. Whatever Mazzanti said,
I
had been the one shot at yesterday; I was the one who had been followed last night. I wished I’d brought the
spade handle out with me but it was tucked under my bed. Besides, in daylight it would excite comment. But I was sick of glancing into alleys and shop doorways in case a ruffian leapt out at me.
Never mind that it was all my fault – how long were they going to bear a grudge?

I saw no one. Or at least no one who looked likely to attack me. It was probably still too early. The people who strode down the steep streets to the Keyside were the respectable folk with
business to do; ruffians like the ones who threatened me had probably been up half the night, attacking unwary revellers, breaking into shops, or making off with the coal heaped on the Keyside for
loading into the keels. And they would be gin-sodden too; they would still be wrapped up on the floors of their hovels, snoring in a drunken stupor or nursing headaches fit for the day of
judgement.

The only person acting suspiciously was the unlikeliest. As I passed, I glanced up the street where the Mazzantis were lodging in Mrs Baker’s house and saw Proctor the psalm teacher
staring up at a window, longingly. Well, he was hardly a danger; he probably wouldn’t kill a rabid dog, on the grounds that it was one of God’s creatures.

And he wasn’t going to win Julia Mazzanti’s adoration either.

On my way down the Side, I called in at a tiny house just beside the breeches shop and chatted to a fellow there who lived on the floor below me until a month or two ago. He is a barber by
trade, and had the good fortune recently to inherit his master’s business. He was looking more prosperous than he had, and gave me a shave at his old rates ‘for friendship’s
sake’. He does a good job and I felt a great deal better for it.

After a breakfast of bread pudding and a tankard of ale, I made my way along the Key for my only lesson of the day. June is a bad month for musicians; indeed the summer is a bad season. All the
gentry and many of the richer tradesmen are at their country estates; if I could make a patron amongst them who would invite me out to a country party, I would be off myself, with alacrity. If it
wasn’t for that hundred guineas under my mattress, it would be a very hard time indeed.

Lizzie Saint, sixteen-year-old daughter of Thomas Saint the printer, had been offered a chance to venture out into the countryside with her friend, Miss Hawks of Gateshead, but chose not to take
up the invitation. Instead, she stayed in town to practise her music and her feminine wiles. Lizzie has a gentleman in mind as a prospective husband and the gentleman is musical; Lizzie, who is
pretty without being beautiful, knows that her harpsichord playing may be the factor that tips the scales in her favour in Mr Philip Ord’s eyes. Ord is the nephew of an old friend of mine,
but I don’t like him. I suspect that Lizzie doesn’t much like him either, but he has coal mines and mixes with the best people in society.

So Lizzie practises on all summer, providing a little income for me, and since she is a good student and a better harpsichord player than some professional players I know, I have no objection to
her assiduity. I spent a pleasant morning with her in a cool room, and her widowed sister provided a little entertaining conversation and a dish of tea afterwards. I fancy they had not seen company
for several days and were eager to talk to anyone available.

I lingered longer than I had intended and my plan of indulging in a little harpsichord practice on my own account was abandoned when I went out on to the Key and heard a clock strike eleven
– I was due at the theatre just after noon. I decided to take refreshment at one of the coffee houses instead, and try and get this matter of Esther’s burglar out of my mind. Houses
were burgled all the time, I told myself; it was not necessarily connected with the ruffians who were after me. I trudged on along the crowded Key, the stifling sun nagging at me.

A man took hold of my arm.

I swung round, brought up my fist…

“Devil take it, man!” Philip Ord snapped. “What’s the matter with you?”

A tradesman does not shout at a gentleman; I did not trust myself to be polite so I kept quiet. What in heaven’s name did Ord think he was doing, leaping out of the crowds like that? He
was a slim man of thirty or so, with a fashionably small wig sitting on top of a thin face and a distasteful expression; he let go of my arm and rubbed his hand against his coat skirts as if my
sleeve had been dirty. It was not. Ord himself was dressed remarkably well, as if he was going courting. Given that he was heading in the right direction for Lizzie Saint’s house, he probably
was.

He was also sweating in the heat – more than I was, I saw with some satisfaction. A fine sheen of moisture coated his red face.

“What’s this I hear about the Mazzanti girl?” he demanded.

I frowned. “She was well enough when I last saw her, yesterday.” I was having difficulty remembering when I had last seen Julia – that experience in Esther’s house last
night had disorientated me. I had seen her when I left the theatre, that was it.

“The word’s all about town she was shot!” Ord said impatiently. “They say you caught the fellow!”

Never believe gossip, I reflected. I explained what had happened – the shot, the chase, the fact that the fellow had got away. I was reluctant to add to Mazzanti’s importance by
supporting his lies but I did not wish to mention the ruffians who were after me; gentlemen look askance at such associations, even if they are unwanted or unlooked for. So I ended with “It
was Signor Mazzanti who was shot at, not Julia.”

He looked at me stonily, as if trying to judge whether I was telling the truth or not. “Her father?” he said at last. “Is that all?”

And he walked off without a word of farewell.

I plodded on along the Key, wending my way round heaps of stinking coal, round boxes of biscuits and candles and kegs of beer, dodging yellow-waistcoated keelmen, and
black-coated preachers prophesying doom. I could not see any of the ruffians but Ord’s sudden appearance had reminded me that I could not afford to lose concentration. But even as I scanned
the shadowed corners of the Key and the entrances to the dark chares, and scrutinised the faces of the crowds through which I pushed, I could not help but reflect that Ord’s concern for Julia
did not sit well with his courtship of Lizzie Saint (which I had heard was all but settled). Was he not the man who had been sent down to London to negotiate terms with the Mazzantis? Back in
March, I thought. He must have met Julia there.

I wondered how strongly he had expressed his admiration for her there, safely out of the gaze of friends and acquaintances. Of course a little harmless flirtation would not have been too
offensive. All the same, whatever his own behaviour, Ord would be the first to condemn my interest in Esther as socially unacceptable.