The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor

was even an unexpected pleasure in being Jane, not Cat: in being someone else.

      The work was often hard but it was not strange to her. She had been brought up not only to run a household but to do the various tasks, from cooking to cleaning and beyond, that she might set a servant to do; this was good for the soul, for it kept a woman humble, which was pleasing in the eyes of God and man; it was also prudent, for it enabled one better to direct and instruct one’s own servants.

      For Cat, what was strange and unpleasant was not so much the work itself but to learn how a servant felt as she scrubbed a floor 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 pos-sible, 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.