Theft of Life (13 page)

‘Naturally,’ Paxton said. ‘He hired
us
!’

‘And permitted us to play something other than Handel,’ Pieltain said. ‘I even managed to smuggle in a couple of my own pieces. And I wish everyone would pay us as he did for the pleasure of our company.’

‘Oh, have you written something new, Monsieur Pieltain?’ Susan said. ‘May I see it? I so enjoyed your Concerto.’

‘I have the score for my latest work of genius – a quartet – here, if you wish to see it, dear lady.’

Susan skipped over to where he was standing.

Paxton raised his eyebrows, looking at Harriet. ‘I doubt that you, Mrs Westerman, are much concerned with Sir Charles’s musical tastes. The evening was very well organised. We, and the other musicians hired, were well treated and well paid. There was a Negro band playing in addition to ourselves.’

‘Damn fine musicians, some of those black fellas,’ the viola player said with a yawn. ‘Seems the darker they are, the better they can blow a horn. Not that a great number of Sir Charles’s lot would know quality when they heard it.’ The man, Harriet noted, had the nose and red cheeks of a drinker. His bitterness has stained him, she thought.

Paxton continued. ‘A great number of people ate and drank until midnight at least, which was when I took my leave, but aside from the magnificence of the occasion, I do not believe that there was anything of particular interest that occurred.’

Harriet felt foolish. The musicians were being kind to her, but she did not know what questions to ask. ‘There was a woman there – a Mrs Trimnell,’ she said. ‘I know a great crowd was present, but might you have seen anything of her? She is a handsome woman, something just over thirty, and dresses rather showily, if well.’ She remembered the man with whom Mrs Trimnell had walked into the private parlour the previous day. ‘And she may have spent much of her time flirting with Sir Charles’s son, Randolph. Her husband was killed on Friday evening, though he did not attend the party.’

Mr Paxton scratched his chin, his still handsome face suddenly sad and thoughtful. ‘Killed? Ah, what times we live in. Now, there was a fellow seemed to be making himself unpleasant to a woman like that at the back of the room while Miss Park was singing, do recall, Shield?’

The viola player nodded. ‘I do at that. Almost told them to shut their traps. She was dressed like a peacock. Pretty gems on her too.’

‘Do you recall what was said?’

He frowned. ‘Couldn’t hear much, though there was “husband” and “disgrace” in there.’ Harriet wondered if someone had taken it upon themselves to criticise Mrs Trimnell’s flirting. Shield picked up his viola and thrummed at the strings with his left hand. ‘To be frank with you, Mrs Westerman, I didn’t notice much of what was said. You see, I was too busy watching the fellow’s monkey. I swear it was swaying in time to the song. I had a lovely time telling Miss Park about her new admirer.’

F
RANCIS SPENT THE REST
of the afternoon walking, moving between the crowds of Sunday idlers at a determined pace. He went down Fleet Street and along the Strand, passing the great houses, the clusters of shops – some shuttered, some not – without looking at them and thinking only of Eliza. Her ‘probably’ made him happy beyond belief; her questions about his past and his motivations for marriage confused and upset him. So his heart expanded and he forged his way blindly through the city until he found himself, to his great surprise, in St James’s Park. The crowds were already beginning to thin. Well-dressed couples with their children and dogs still strolled down the wooded paths and he could hear the lowing of cattle in the middle distance. He was looked at with the usual mild curiosity of a crowd who still found his race a novelty, but did not wish to damage their carefully contrived air of sophistication by showing it.

He glanced up into the sky. There was a strong hint of evening in the clean air, and he turned and began to walk back towards the city again, his thoughts, like his pace, more measured now. He recalled what she had said about him being both African and a bookseller. He had loved books with a hungry passion for many years. The first man he had seen reading was the blood and thunder steward on board one of the slavers where his master had loaned him as a servant to the captain. He had asked what the man was doing, and when he was told that the thing he held contained stories, he thought there must be witchraft in it. When the steward was elsewhere, he lifted the book to his ear and asked it very politely if it would tell him a story of the Tortoise and the Elephant. It would not speak to him and he remembered that sting of disappointment and shame at its silence. Perhaps the book thought it was beneath it to tell the tales he wanted to hear.

He learned more clearly what a book was on his first visit to England. Then on the return voyage to the West Indies, one of the other boys on the ship had taken pity on him and begun to teach him to read from a book of his own. The book was
Robinson Crusoe
and slowly, painfully, Francis learned to understand it. It was his first friend and ally, and it spoke of a world he understood. He thought at first it was the Holy Book of the white men. When he discovered it was not, he made it his own. The boy made him a present of it. There were several days in his life that Francis would always remember so vividly he could relive them at will. The day of his capture, that of his trial, that of his freedom and the day he puzzled out a chapter of
Robinson Crusoe
on his own and understood it. Who better than him to sell books? Who better than him to understand what they could do for a man?

As he passed under the Temple Bar he realised that he had not read the manuscript, and that it was already dark. Lamps were lit along the road, pools of yellow light. It was a great deal later than he had thought. He hesitated, wondering whether to collect the manuscript from his office and read it overnight before returning to Eliza in the morning with his report on it like a schoolboy. He remembered the kiss; he had never held her like that before. Surely it would be better to go to her house as promised, even at this late hour, even if it was only to apologise again. She would forgive him. She must realise that their conversation would have set him racing about all afternoon. He would not try to kiss her again, he would not propose again. He would be honest with her. He would say he had thought about what she had said and intended to think more on it, then return to his bed and hope the day of walking would have worn him out sufficiently; and even if his mind still sped forwards and back into different futures, different pasts, he would sleep anyway. He did not turn up the road to his own lodgings then, but turned past the dark mass of St Paul’s towards her home.

Fear crashed over him before he could make sense of what he smelled in the warm evening air. Smoke. Not the usual soot of charcoal and iron – something sharper. He looked up: the upper window of Mrs Smith’s shop was open and he could just see flames, dully flickering free in the room, the plume of smoke creeping out and upwards.

‘Fire.’
The word struggled from his throat in a whisper. He ran the final couple of yards to the house and forced his voice into a shout.
‘Fire!’
This time he screamed it and began hammering at the door. ‘Fire, I say! Awake!’ A face or two appeared out of the gloom of the street and other voices took up the call. Panic swirled and swung through his muscles, closing his throat. He battered at the shop door again and tried to peer in through the windows. They were crowded with prints and advertisements, but beyond them he could see the dark interior – and no movement but the billowing smoke.

He felt a hand heavy on his shoulder, and twisted round. A constable stood behind him in a short cape and wide-brimmed hat that left his face in shadow. ‘You know the house?’ he said. ‘How many here?’

‘A maid and a boy sleeping downstairs at the back. The mistress of the house. We must get this door down!’ He all but yelled it into the constable’s face.

The man nodded and reared back, and together they barged at the lock. Once, twice, and at the third assault – the shock of it splintering through his shoulder – there was a crack as the wood around the lock gave way and they tumbled into the shop. Deep dark and thick smoke. Shadows and light from the upper floor, the parlour, a strange crack and grinding in the air like a giant’s teeth snapping bones.

‘Out back in the kitchen – the maid and a boy,’ Francis shouted, and the smoke sank into his lungs and stung him. The constable blundered off into the darkness, his cape held over his nose and mouth, his lamp swinging wildly to right and left. Francis pulled his handkerchief out and held it over his face then sprinted up the stairs. ‘Eliza!’ he shouted, though it came out as a croak. The fire was loud, but he could hear the bells being rung outside. He reached the top of the stairs, stumbled blindly forward and fell; his hands went forward to save him and he was on his knees, his palms among shattered glass. There was a stink of cold gravy. He got to his feet again and the door to her parlour was also fastened against him. He turned and kicked sideways at the brass lock and it gave way on the second blow. The heat was suddenly intense. Ribbons of flame ran around the room – the curtains and soft fabrics were alight; flames ate up the prints on the walls, burning them out of their frames. The door to Eliza’s bedchamber was half-open. He called again, stepped into the sitting room, his eyes now streaming. It seemed as if the flames hesitated and turned towards him, then settled into a crouch.

He saw her. She lay on the floor half-concealed by the bulk of the sofa, its fabric already alight. He dropped to his knees and crawled towards her through the smoke. Her pale round face was turned towards him, her lips slightly open as if caught in mild surprise. One of her blue eyes was open and staring, the other gone – a bloody wound. His breath left him. No. It could not be. He denied it, absolutely. He heard himself call her name, heard himself screaming out. He reached for her hand. He must get her out, he must carry her out of here. Her skin, in the middle of the heat of the room, was cold.

There was a thunder crack above, and the ceiling seemed to bulge and pulse. The fire had found him. No matter. If he could not carry her out he would stay with her in the flames. It would only take a moment to die here. He put his arms around her – then another arm grabbed him around the chest, and as the ceiling exploded and fell, he was wrestled and dragged down the stairs and half-pushed, half-carried out into the street. He fought the man who rescued him, frantic to be free, but there were other hands on him now and they would not let him leap back into the flames. He tried to call for her but the fire had scorched out his lungs and he was voiceless. His struggles died down. The men who had held him moved away. He collapsed against the wall of one of the houses opposite, blank and broken. The fire engine had appeared and was shooting great gusts of water over their heads. Someone else collapsed onto the stones next to him – the constable who had helped him break in.

‘Did you drag me out?’ Francis said in a whisper.

‘I did.’

‘I cannot thank you.’

Someone pushed a mug into the constable’s hand. He drank about half of it, then passed it to Francis. ‘That’s your own business.’ It was porter – hard and dark drinking to Francis’s mind – but it did something to cool the torn ragged burning in his throat. He could see nothing in the darkness but Elizabeth.

‘The maid, the boy?’ he asked at last.

The constable tried to speak but his first atempt was cut off in a fit of coughing. ‘Boy was sleeping in the kitchen.’ He nodded towards a small figure hunched and shivering in the shadows of a doorway oppos- ite. ‘No sign of a woman. The back window was open.’ He started coughing again and spat richly on the ground. ‘What about Mrs Smith?’

‘She was already dead,’ Francis said. It seemed as if he felt the cold of her flesh again. He managed to lift his eyes. The blaze of the upper storey was retreating under the jets of water. The men worked the pumps like furies, their sweating faces visible in the lights of the lanterns and shadows of the fire. The flames lifted and sulked. Retreating rather than dying. The constable got slowly to his feet.

‘I’m grieved at that. A good lady. Well, she’s thanking me in Heaven for saving you.’

Francis looked up. The man’s face was streaked with soot.

‘I hope I did not hurt you,’ he said.

The constable bent down and patted him rather awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘No, lad, you did not.’ He moved away into the crowd that had come to look at the show. Francis continued to watch the flames. He could not think; a strange numbness had settled over his mind and body, so if minutes or hours passed, he could not tell.

Another tankard was put in his hands. It was then he began to shake, a bone-rattling convulsion that refused to end. A woman he knew, the wife of a grocer, put a blanket round his shoulders and asked after Mrs Smith by her first name. He croaked out the news and she held him to her until he had stopped crying. Then she looked into his face. ‘Lord save us, your eyes look like the devil’s, Mr Glass.’ He reached up to rub the soot out of them, and only when he heard her gasp of distress did he see the blood on his hands and realise his palms were a network of sharp pains. He remembered his fall outside the parlour door. ‘Right, Mr Glass. Come with me. You need cleaning up before that goes bad.’ He twisted round towards the boy in the doorway and she saw him. ‘That’s her apprentice, Joshua, isn’t it?’ He nodded, unable to speak through the hurt and the smoke. ‘I suppose we had better fetch him too.’ She looked over her shoulder at the print shop, the slackening flames. ‘Ah, poor lady.’

Francis, feeling shambling and old, let her lead him away, each step discovering new hurts from his heels to his head, and all he could see was Miss Eliza’s face and the bloody wound that had been her left eye.

H
ARRIET AND SUSAN EXTENDED
their visit to the musicians long enough to hear the Allegro and, Harriet was sure, to avoid the visit of Mr Babington’s sister. They were both rather quiet as the carriage trundled out of Soho and west towards Berkeley Square. M. Peltain had lent a score to Susan, who held it tightly to her chest as she stared out of the window at the streets where she had grown up in the freedom of relative poverty. Harriet felt as if she was driving the girl back to a prison cell.