‘Do you do that?’ She was interested. ‘I do that too. Is that why you like such big fires, and have such a huge one burning all the time, even when you aren’t at home?’
‘We are here to talk about you, little one. Not me.’ He leaned back in the deep chair, elbows resting on the high curved arms. ‘Tell me how your parents died, and of your life, and your wretched husband and his wretched mother. Tell me your hopes, if you are young enough to have any left. And tell me if you would like me to get your house back for you.’
She sat up straight and stared at him. ‘You could do that?’
‘Talk to me,’ Andrew said very softly. ‘Close your eyes and lose your fears in the heat and the darkness. Drink your wine, forget me and talk to the flames in your head.’
The great hall felt more like home than ever, and the loss of her own had become somehow less tragic. The shadows flared, shot with foaming scarlet as the fire leapt and roared up the huge chimney. Andrew Cobham lit no candles. They were not needed. Although it was only late afternoon, it was already winter dark beyond the unshuttered windows and the steady rain thrummed loudly against the glass. The fire lit the hall in its accustomed swelter. Tyballis sat, knees together, on a small stool as close to the flames as she dared. She drank and the wine also warmed her. ‘My father was a corvisor,’ she murmured. ‘He made shoes and belts and supported the guild. He was well respected and twice he was taken as a bailiff’s assistant. He even volunteered for the Watch. He never beat me and he used to tell me stories. I loved him.’ She had taken off her shoes and stretched her stockinged feet to the blaze, her toes steaming as she wriggled them inside the wet woollen knit. ‘Most days my mother worked in the brewers by Cripplegate,’ she continued, half-dreaming. ‘So, there was a good income and I was an only child. We were comfortably off and owned our own house. It wasn’t a grand street, but we had the grandest house in it.’
‘How old were you, child, when they drowned?’ Andrew said.
The dream evaporated. ‘How did you know they drowned?’ Tyballis demanded. ‘You don’t even know their names.’
‘Names are invariably unimportant,’ he said. ‘I use several myself, and none means a jot. But understanding lives is my business. You were ten? Eleven? You were with them in the boat, I presume, when it happened?’
She muttered, ‘I don’t want to talk about it, after all.’
‘Remember your courage, child,’ he told her softly. ‘Misery is always better faced and pain admitted, before being safely hidden again. The pretence of forgetting festers like an untended wound. Every one of us has something we would sooner wash clean yet cannot, but no man lives long unless he owns his own shadows.’
A flagon stood on the stool at his side, and he had again filled both their cups. Tyballis lowered her eyes, watching without seeming to watch. Her heartbeat had quickened, an uncomfortable feeling which she both understood and repudiated. Now she drank without caring. ‘All right. You’re right about everything. I was eleven and they were drowned and I was in the boat with them. We were only going upriver a little way, but there was a jam by the bridge and it was high tide. The waves were big and smelly and one of the wherrymen was angry because he couldn’t get through and he had an important fare. I can still remember his face.’ She disappeared a moment, her nose in her cup. Then she spoke to the fire as she had been told. ‘His eyes were mean and his nose was red-blotched and he shouted and swore at our boatman. I stared into his face and the next thing I remember, we were all underwater. Two boats went down. There was ours, and another one full of pigs. It was a pig I hung onto. It was frantic but it could swim and I couldn’t, and it pulled me up to the surface. I saw my mother. Her skirts dragged her down, billowing out like barrels. Her cap had come off and the river filth was in her hair. I felt my father’s hands. He was struggling to push me up onto a boat. Then he went back down for my mother. I never saw them again.’
Her voice trailed off, lost behind the crackle of burning logs. Once again her feelings confused her. She wondered if she was half-asleep, and for a moment seemed to be flying. Then the soft voice in her ear said, ‘Don’t cry, little one. Misery rarely repeats, and once related, always diminishes. Lean back and close your eyes. You have no need to continue. I can guess what happened next.’
She sniffed, vaguely aware of a velvet shoulder and the soothing softness of thick black hair against her forehead, the heat at her back and careful hands around her. She curled a little and closed her eyes as commanded. ‘I don’t remember it very well,’ she whispered. ‘But I remember the taste of river filth and I kept being sick. Someone ran to get the sheriff and Constable Webb came and collected me and took me home. That was when Margery and Borin moved in. They used to rent the top floor in the old lodging house next door, but my mother never spoke to them because they weren’t respectable. I was too little to look after myself properly, but they didn’t look after me properly either. I was an awful mess for a long, long time.’
‘I assume you were forced to marry this charitable neighbour?’ The voice was a soft tickle in her ear. ‘Your father’s guild did not claim you as ward?’
‘The Blessops took me over first. They wanted the house, not me. Borin never liked me. I didn’t like him either.’
‘Brutality is the defence of the stupid.’ Tyballis found her cup refilled yet again, and then it was held enticingly to her lips. The soft voice continued. ‘Drink, little one. It’s time to forget again. Perhaps time to sleep.’
She nodded. ‘But I don’t want to go upstairs in the cold. I like the fire. It’s so nice being warm and cosy. When I’m cold, I remember the water over my head pushing me down. And I did do the right thing, didn’t I? Running away, I mean, even if I’ve lost my house.’
‘You don’t need my approval, child.’
‘But it was you who told me to run away. No one ever told me to leave him before. People sympathised but they said, Be strong. Put up with it. A wife must obey her husband, and if he beats her, she must try harder. But you said, Leave him. And I did.’ As she looked up it occurred to her that she was now curled on his lap, though she had no clear memory of how she got there. It didn’t seem to matter. There was something else far more interesting that nagged at the back of her mind. ‘It’s the king, isn’t it?’ she said suddenly.
There was a short but noticeable pause. Then Andrew Cobham said, ‘Perhaps you are not as drunk as I thought you.’
Tyballis, immediately pleased, said, ‘Do you think that was clever of me?’ Her voice, she decided, sounded quite distinct, and not at all like Borin’s slurred mumbles when he was cupshotten. Indeed, she felt deliciously comforted and delightfully comfortable. Her head, however, had begun to spin. ‘I worked it out,’ she hurried on, ‘about the poison, I mean. You keep saying you’re not a lord or a sir, but it’s the king you work for, isn’t it? So, you are important.’
He chuckled and his arms loosened, allowing her to sit a little straighter. ‘The people I work for are important, it is true. I am not. And at present I answer not to the king, but to his brother. But I can tell you nothing else, child, and hopefully you will have forgotten all this entirely once you are sober.’
Tyballis frowned. ‘I do understand. Borin used to work for a real baron, but Borin certainly wasn’t important. People owed the baron money and if they didn’t pay up, Borin would go and hit them until they did.’ She tried to focus on her host’s eyes but found that, inexplicably, this was increasingly difficult to achieve. ‘But I’m not tipsy,’ she insisted. ‘Borin used to get drunk all the time, so I know what it sounds like and I don’t sound like that at all. Listen. I can talk perfectly well and I know exactly what’s happening. Though I’m not sure I should be sitting on your lap and I’m not sure how I got here.’