“I’m safe.” Emeline shook her head, loose curls now streaming rain.
“You will be, my lady,” David said, and grabbed the reins of her horse.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Rain pounded, blurring the way ahead, closing the night with ice. With David’s firm hand to her horse’s bridle, she rode up Hart Street, passing the old Crouched Friars’ Priory, and into the narrow alleys beyond it. He was running, the horse’s hooves fast and heavy in the puddles as Emeline held to pommel and mane. Both out of breath, both soaked, in minutes they passed Seethinge Lane and turned quickly right. Little more than a rutted track, but now a row of three tenements blocked the alleyway, all lightless as the shadows seemed darker than black and the high walls seemed to shiver with water. No braziers or lit torches hung from the doorways. No candlelight flickered within the windows.
“Here, hurry, my lady.”
Emeline was frightened, and nearly as angry. “Where on earth have you brought me? And why? I insist on staying –”
“My lady.” He was apologetic. “It was his lordship’s orders. And the faster you settle here, the quicker I can return to help him. The attack was planned, and they outnumber us. Traitors, French backed. The constable has been called, though he may not be at home. I’ve alerted others. But Lord Nicholas thought only of you –”
Emeline slumped, catching her breath. She did not realise at first that she was crying. “Settle me, if settling me is so important, hiding me away where I can do nothing to help, but only sit alone in misery.” She stared at the looming many storeyed building and its rough buttressed and ramshackle walls. “Where is this? It looks like a gaol.”
She dismounted and David tied the wet and tired horse to the long hooked rail at the tenement’s rear. He unlocked the outer door. Inside it was just as wet. No central ceiling closed in the stairs. Metal rungs, soaked wood, the clang and clank as they hurried up and the rain poured down. Only one upward climb to each storey, but the steps were narrow and steep. David, still running, supported the lady’s elbow as she pattered, clutching at her sodden skirts, trying to keep up. “It’s my old family home, my lady, once belonging to my father and now to me. I meant to sell after my parents were gone, but it’s worth nothing in coin yet has had its uses over the years. Whenever his lordship, with Alan and I, came to London incognito or intending to keep out of sight, we came here. The place has been used – oh, many times. But it’s not comfortable, my lady. Serviceable for an hour or two, no more.”
The rain poured past the interminable stairs and there remained no solid balustrade to cling to. There was noise, half drowned by pelting rain, but constant as breath; a low buzzing hive of complaint and argument, creaking timbers as pliable as a ship’s hull in the ocean, the persistent shuffle and rattle within a black background. At every stop where a corridor led off from the steps to the dwellings, there were curtains and old rags hanging from wooden rails, or leather flaps nailed over openings. Few doors, only doorways.
Emeline stared. “You were born here?”
“Yes, my lady. Here.” He led her along a passage past other shaded entrances. Then there was a door, low framed but almost solid, with a water butt outside. David unlocked it and stooped to enter. “Mind your head, my lady. Now – there are candles on the shelf, and stools below it. I can build a small fire.”
She flopped down on the stool he brought, tired from stairs and even more tired from fear and desperation. “I can find the candles and light the fire myself. Take the horse. Get back to Nicholas. Tell him I’m safe, and go and save his life.”
“I’ll not argue with that, my lady.” His face was white and worn. “It’s his lordship means more to me than anything – his life more important than my life –” David turned and ran. The door swung and slammed behind him. The walls shook.
Emeline sat alone for what seemed a long time. A mournful hopelessness leaked through the gloom. Gradually she could see, though there was little enough for notice. The tiny chamber was dusty but the streaming cobwebs hung almost invisible within the relentless shadows. Eventually she found a small scattered pile of faggots and a tinderbox beside the little hearth. She lit a fire. The flames leapt, showing her nothing but it warmed her fingers and the soaked toes of her shoes. Beyond the thin walls the continuous noises reverberated. The murmur of belch, complaint and objection, the stirring of a wooden spoon in a metal pot, deep snoring, coughing and then someone was hitting someone else, and the someone else shouted and cursed. Many were words Emeline had never heard before. Then suddenly she sat up and stopped crying.
A galloping race of thoughts had interrupted the misery. Approaching the trembling planks of the wall that separated the Witton chamber from the one next door, Emeline tapped politely. There was no response. She banged louder.
“Oo’s that?” demanded a woman’s voice, as the other sounds quietened.
“My name,” said Emeline, “is Emma, and I’m a – friend – of the Wittons. I wonder if I could – speak to someone – in fact to everyone – about something terribly, terribly important?” She told them everything at once, and she listened to a great deal in return. But there was little time for explanations. “My friends are outnumbered,” she said, a little desperate. “Brave, but already wounded. Help is needed at once – or it will all be lost.”
“There’ll be naught lost with me at your back, lady.”
“’Tis time to help our friends.”
“Bugger the friends. Let’s go have some fun.”
It was still raining, even harder now, as they crept from the tenement, hurrying down the stairs and out into the storm. There was little wind but the sleet was persistent, closing the night into moonlessness.
Emeline led the group of David Witton’s tenement neighbours from Seethinge Lane back down towards Harp and Water Lanes. Cautious, keeping low and careful not to arouse the Watch or other passers-by, they turned each corner, huddled together, coming closer. With Emeline came twelve men, eight women and one following child with his thumb in his mouth. Muttering turned to whispers, then sank to silence except for the pelt of rain. Then finally noise began echoing back.
The fighting had stopped but it had clearly not finished as Emeline had hoped. As those from the tenement crept forwards, Emeline halted abruptly and peered around the final sharp street corner. Beyond it was narrow and little could be seen, but the sound of voices carried, even through the rain.
It was through the rain that Emeline stared, the others grouped tight at her back. She had seen Nicholas. He stood, unsteady and wavering, leaning back against the long brick wall of the storehouse behind. The overhang of the upper storey sheltered him, but he could barely stand. His forehead was once more bleeding heavily and the blood and the rain streaked his face in persistent stripes. It was Adrian he faced. Behind Adrian were eight men, none of whom Emeline recognised. Beside Nicholas stood David. She could not see either Jerrid or Alan. Adrian was speaking softly, half obscured by the rain which sluiced over his oiled cape and pounded on the ground around. He was unhooded, his hat was drenched and his boots squelched. But he was smiling.
“It is a pleasant change, Nicholas,” Adrian said, “to see you humiliated, while I stand proud. You appreciate, I hope, the justice.”
Nicholas wiped bloody streaks from his eyes. “I’m as uninterested in my supposed embarrassments as I am in yours, Adrian. You’ve finally won a battle of sorts here, though a battle of shame with louts, foreigners and traitors, and your own arrival coming only after the fight was safely over. Now it’s the consequences which interest me. Do you have some plan or ambition? Or are you as caught in this trap as I have been?”