The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor

that belonged to someone else. It was a different feeling from that of someone whose family owned the floor.

      When Cat thought about her former life it seemed remote and somehow foreign to her, as if it belonged to a different person. But she was too tired to do much thinking. The work was exhausting, but that was good because sometimes it stopped Cat from remembering what she had done to Edward, what he had done to her, and what her life had now become.

      She was so heavy with weariness that she usually fell asleep as soon as she climbed into bed in the attic she shared with Margery. But she had bad dreams, haunted by Cousin Edward, and by the fear that she was carrying his child. On the first night, she woke both herself and Margery with her screams.

      Two days after Cat’s arrival, Mistress Noxon summoned her to her little room by the kitchen. The skin around her eyes was pink and puffy.

      ‘You should know that he’s dead. My uncle.’

      ‘Oh mistress.’ Cat’s eyes filled with tears. Jem.

      ‘Tell no one. There will be no mourning. We don’t know him, and we never did. You understand? The man was such a fool. I never met such a one in all my days.’

      But Mistress Noxon kept the stone that Jem had sent her by Cat in her pocket, together with her money, her keys, her rings, and other precious things.

      Cat wept herself to sleep that night – as quietly as possible, for fear of waking Margery again. Without Jem, she had no one who cared for her unconditionally and completely. Without Jem, she was alone. Unless her father found her.

      According to the gossip of servants, if a woman did not take pleasure in an act of copulation, she could not become pregnant by it. Cat did not believe this, not least because she could not understand how any woman could take any pleasure whatsoever from such an assault on her body even if it were not forced on her.

      Besides, she had seen animals about the business in the farmyard and fields of Coldridge. For females at least, copulation had more to do with grim necessity than pleasure.

      The fear that she might be pregnant remained. She could think of nothing worse than carrying Edward’s ill-begotten child. She became even more afraid of this than of being taken up for Edward’s murder.

      She had made her calculations. She thought it probable that Edward was still alive. Had he been killed, the news would surely have penetrated even to Three Cocks Yard by now, even to the basement kitchen that was the centre of her life. The Alderleys were such a prominent family that the intelligence would have spread throughout the town faster than the Fire itself.

      You could not hide a murder, even in a house like Barnabas Place with high, thick walls, though you could hide lesser crimes. Assault and battery, for example. Or rape.

      At the beginning of her fourth week at the beck and call of Mistress Noxon, she had pains in her groin and the blood began to flow. Some men believed that a woman’s monthly courses were full of evil humours, that they blackened sugar, made wine sour and turned pickled meat rancid. Men, Cat thought, were such fools that they would believe anything. Mistress Noxon provided the necessary cloths to deal with the blood, and even an infusion of valerian and fleur-de-luce to ease the pain.

      Cat welcomed the discomfort and inconvenience. If she had fallen pregnant, it would have been necessary to find a way to kill the baby.

      Gradually, Cat became aware that there was another difficulty in the shape of John, the manservant. He was a tall, broad-shouldered lad, a country boy at heart, with red hair, bright blue eyes and a slab-like face whose colour and approximate shape made Cat think of a leg of mutton before it had gone in the oven. Margery, the cook, thought he was the finest young man that the world, let alone London, had to offer. John had been quite happy to accept this adoration and even to repay it at his convenience with small doses of affection.

      But then Cat had come to Three Cocks Yard and, despite her best efforts to be plain Jane, to be colourless and dull in every particular, John found her of absorbing interest. He was not a man to whom words came easily, but he had other ways of making his feelings known. He blushed when she came into the room. He would appear at her shoulder when she was emptying the slops and take the pots from her in his enormous hands. Once, when the kitchen boy showed a tendency to be impudent to her, John clouted his ear with such force that the boy’s feet lost contact with the ground.

      One consequence of this undesired and unrequited devotion was that Margery hated Cat.

       CHAPTER TWELVE

      AT LAST, NEARLY six weeks after the Fire, the rain came.

      Cat stood by the attic window of the house and squinted over the surviving rooftops and the jagged outline of the ruins at the stump of St Paul’s tower.

      There had been showers since the Fire, and dull days with heavy grey skies, but the heat of summer had mingled with the heat of the Fire and lingered long after it should have ended. This rain was different. It poured from the sky in thick silver rods like water through a colander.

      It was much colder, too. That was less welcome. Cat went down the steep stairs, little better than a ladder, to the second floor, and worked her way down to the basement. The kitchen was full of the smell of bread. The baker’s boy had called in her absence.

      ‘What kept you?’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘Daydreaming again? It won’t do. Not in this house. I had to open the door myself to the boy.’

      Cat curtsied and apologized. She had learned humility lately, along with her new name, which she answered to like a dog. A dog called Jane. They had not been easy lessons.

      ‘Draw the beer now.’

      She left Mistress Noxon laying the tray for her to take upstairs. She had often felt the rough edge of Mistress Noxon’s tongue. At first, it had made Cat furious – how dare the woman speak to her in that way, especially when they were alone? Later, she accepted it as necessary.

      Her circumstances had changed and so must she. In time, she learned to distinguish when Mistress Noxon was truly angry, when she was irritable for a reason that had nothing to do with Cat, and when her anger was entirely mechanical, administered for Cat’s good, in the same way that Cat’s nurse used to administer a regular purge to her.

      She filled the beer jugs from the barrel in the scullery and took them back to the kitchen.

      ‘Take the tray now. Master Hakesby’s up. The barber’s coming to shave him, and he’ll want his breakfast before that.’

      Cat tapped on Master Hakesby’s door, and he told her to enter. He was partly dressed and in his gown, a handkerchief around his shaven head. He was seated at the table by the window and already at work.

      ‘Put it on the chest,’ he said without looking up. ‘And pour some beer, will you?’

      She obeyed and brought the cup over to him. He took it without looking at her. She strained to see what he was working on. There was a small sheet of paper before him. He was using ink but not a ruler or compasses.

      This is an idea, Cat thought, something that comes in the night and needs to be pinned down before it vanishes in the daylight.

      A cruciform shape. A church, then. An octagon where the four arms meet: probably a great dome, like St Peter’s in Rome. And, from the transepts, curving outer lines stretching to nave and choir, softening the right angles where the transepts meet with the long axis of the church.

      Was it St Paul’s? A new St Paul’s?

      Master Hakesby took a mouthful of beer. He spilled a few drops on the table and dabbed at it with a handkerchief. He looked up but she didn’t think he saw her, not properly. ‘What is it, Jane?’

      ‘Nothing, sir.’

      ‘Then go away.’

      The next day, after