‘I am overwhelmed by your ladyship’s kindness,’ Holdsworth said. ‘But I have not yet decided whether -’
She held up a small hand. ‘Stay a minute, sir. I do not wish you to decide before you know the full circumstances, before you know exactly what you may meet with in Cambridge. I could not allow that to lie on my conscience. Be so good as to ring the bell.’
He did as she asked. A moment later the footman entered the room.
‘Ask Mr Cross to step in here.’
The servant withdrew as silently as he had come. Holdsworth heard movement at the other end of the room. The lady by the window had at last left her chair, and was advancing towards him. She was almost as tall as he was. She was plainly dressed and appeared perfectly self-possessed. Her thin face and heavy features would have prevented her from being considered beautiful. But she was undeniably striking.
Lady Anne smiled at her. ‘Well, Elinor?’
‘I should like to see how Mr Cross does for myself. And besides, perhaps I should make myself known to Mr Holdsworth. After all, it is possible that we may meet again.’
Lady Anne nodded. ‘Elinor, may I present Mr Holdsworth? And Mr Holdsworth, this is Mrs Carbury, my goddaughter.’
He bowed low. She gave an almost imperceptible curtsy in return, examining him as though appraising his value in pounds, shillings and pence. Her eyes were blue, with the whites very bright and pure, and fringed with long dark lashes. Holdsworth thought that her eyes and her skin, which was unblemished, would probably be accounted her best features. Something about her struck him as familiar. But he could not have met her before.
‘If you go to Cambridge,’ Lady Anne said to him, ‘you will see something of Mrs Carbury. Her husband is the Master of Jerusalem.’
There was a tap on the door, and Mr Cross entered the room. He wore the same brown coat and scarf as before, and his right hand was stained with ink as if he had been engaged in writing when Lady Anne’s summons had come to him.
‘I have unfolded my proposition to Mr Holdsworth,’ Lady Anne told him. ‘At least in outline. However, I cannot in all conscience allow him to move any further in this matter without showing him why he would be advised to go cautiously if he wishes to avoid any – any discomfort.’
Mr Cross glanced at Holdsworth and then back to her. ‘As I said, Mr Holdsworth is strong,’ he observed in a whisper. ‘He has that on his side.’
‘Indeed. Pray remove your scarf.’
Mrs Carbury came a step closer.
Mr Cross undid the loose knot that held the scarf, let the ends fall away, and freed his neck from its folds.
Holdsworth stared fixedly at what was revealed. Mrs Carbury sighed.
‘Mr Cross will not object if you inspect more closely,’ Lady Anne said to him. ‘Of course these things look worse as they begin to heal.’
Holdsworth came closer to the little man and looked down at his neck. Mr Cross obligingly tilted his head this way and that. The skin above the Adam’s apple was marked with a smudged and swollen circlet of purple and blue. He swallowed, and a grimace passed across his face as though even that movement caused him discomfort.
‘You must be on your guard if you see my son, sir,’ Lady Anne said. ‘He tried to strangle Mr Cross.’
5
When Holdsworth left Golden Square that morning, he did not know whether he would accept Lady Anne’s commission. He could not rid himself of the memory of Elinor Carbury’s face. He walked slowly down towards the river. It was only when he reached the Strand that he realized Mrs Carbury reminded him in some way that he did not entirely understand of Maria. Maria had been fair-complexioned and small of stature, whereas Mrs Carbury was dark and tall. But the two women had a similar build, and a similar habit of looking very directly at one.
The Strand was full of shoppers and noise. He walked slowly towards the City. After all that had happened, he was very tired. He was foced to stop on Ludgate Hill, where three sedan chairs and their bearers had entangled themselves; the chairs were swaying dangerously and the bearers were swearing, and the chairs’ occupants were rapping on the glass and, in one case, screaming. Through the racket, Holdsworth heard somebody behind him say his name. When he turned he found Mrs Farmer was at his shoulder with a basket on either arm. Her face was pink, the skin damp with the heat.
‘Madam – good day to you.’ Holdsworth tried to bow but the crowd made that difficult.
‘I looked for you this morning, sir,’ she said, ‘but you had slipped out of the house before I was awake.’
‘I am in the habit of rising early. May I relieve you of those baskets?’
She thrust them at him. ‘I wish to speak to you, Mr Holdsworth. We cannot do it here. Let us cross the road – I am going home.’
She threaded her way between a stationary wagon and a coach and passed unscathed on to the other side of the road. Nature had made her a short, broad woman with a nose like a beak and the smallest of chins. With a little help from Ned, she was now broader than ever, for she carried within her their first child and she was within a month or so of her term. Holdsworth followed, marvelling at the way the woman strode through the foot passengers in an unswerving straight line as though they were the Red Sea and she had been miraculously assured that they would part before her, as indeed they did. With Holdsworth in her wake, she set off down Newbridge Street. She was taking him out of his way – so far as he had any plan, he was making for Leadenhall Street.
As they were passing the Bridewell Hospital, Mrs Farmer stopped so sharply that Holdsworth almost collided with her. ‘Have you seen Mr Farmer today, sir?’
‘Yes – I have.’
‘And did he find the opportunity to mention that we shall soon need your room?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘We both regret the necessity,’ she said in a perfunctory way. ‘But when the baby is born, we shall need to house the nurse somewhere. Besides, I am sure you yourself must wish to remove somewhere more convenient.’
Holdsworth did not ask in what way convenient, or for whom. Instead he listened to the mournful rattle and clanks of the treadmills and stared through the hospital’s gates at a group of vagrants picking hemp under the shelter of the arcade. He did not wish to become one of those. He did not want the poorhouse, either.
‘It will not take you long to find somewhere,’ Mrs Farmer assured him, or even herself. ‘I am sure Mr Farmer will give you every assistance; that is, everything within his limited powers, though of course his resources are much stretched at present. But perhaps there may be somewhere in Leadenhall Street.’
He bowed. A corner in a cellar, perhaps, or the bench in the workshop where he left the barrow. Mrs Farmer might even have calculated that he would be useful there, a night-watchman who required no wages.
They crossed Blackfriars Bridge and turned along Bankside. Neither of them spoke. The house came into view, with Goat Stairs beyond. He fixed his eyes on the worn paving slabs beneath his feet to avoid looking at the stairs themselves and the water slapping and rustling at the foot of them. Gulls flew up around him, their wings beating with a swift, irregular rhythm. On the ground he saw the head and tail of a dead fish, lying among its own entrails. Above him, the wheeling birds cried savagely, waiting to return to what was left of the fish. They twisted in the air like scraps of charred paper above a bonfire.
Gulls would eat anything. He had seen men and women pulled from the water with their eyes pecked out and the fleshy parts of their faces eaten away. It was lucky that Maria had been found so soon, her body wedged against a cable a few yards downstream, or she might have suffered the same fate. It came to him very suddenly, and with the force of a revelation, that he did not want to be here any longer. He did not want to be beside the river. He did not want to be in Leadenhall Street either. He would not be a ghost in his past life.