… and then I was free, gasping air into my lungs. I could sense a struggle around me, some brief fight. By the time I was recovered we were surrounded by a ring of men in plain, patched clothing. Plain but clean. One of them held a blade to Howard’s throat. Another held his chairman.
A short, powerful figure slipped noiselessly into the torchlight, hat worn low, his nose and mouth covered in a black cloth. James Fleet. He reached down and touched the pulse in Kitty’s neck. ‘Inside,’ he said to one of his men, who picked her up and carried her away. She didn’t even stir. Why was she not moving? I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t find my tongue. Everything had taken on a strange, muffled feeling, like a dream. My teeth were chattering again. Someone threw a cloak over my shoulders.
Howard turned to Fleet. He was a soldier once more – and he recognised a fellow captain. ‘I am Charles Howard, brother of the Earl of Suffolk. That man is mine.’
Fleet smiled. He gestured to his man to lower the blade away from Howard’s throat. ‘And how much is he worth to you, my lord?’
Howard grinned, stepping away from his captor. ‘A guinea.’
‘A guinea…’ Fleet murmured. ‘D’you hear that Mr Hawkins? How much you are valued?’ His men laughed softly.
Howard scowled. The madness was returning, now he was free again. No one laughed at him, especially not a gang of low thieves.
‘No deal, Mr Howard,’ Fleet said. ‘Now leave.’
Howard’s eyes bulged in fury. ‘How dare you! How dare you bark orders as if I were some common footman! I will-’
Fleet tipped his chin – a silent command. A moment later Howard’s chairman fell to his knees, his throat cut. Blood gushed from the wound, spurting in a thick stream. He choked for a few seconds, then slumped to the ground, dead.
Fleet stepped back from the pool of blood spreading out into the dirt.
Howard gaped at the body. And then he ran.
I must have collapsed after that as I remember nothing more until we reached Fleet’s den. The blow to my head and the freezing cold of the river had left me dazed and tired to the marrow. As to what happened to the chairman, poor devil, I never learned. Every man pays a price for entering St Giles in the dead of night. His price was harsh indeed – and all the crueller when his master had escaped without a scratch. So the world turns – kill a nobleman and the rookery would be razed to the ground, the gang hunted down and hanged without mercy. Slit a chairman’s throat and no one would notice or care.
When I woke I was being carried up the stairs to the large room at the top of the house. Some of Fleet’s gang stood about, smoking and talking in soft voices. ‘Strip those wet duds off him, Connie,’ someone said, and an old woman hobbled over, her hair a wispy cloud of white beneath a quilted cap. She removed my clothes, batting my hands away when I tried to help, then wrapped me in a linen sheet and several thick blankets. I was so weak I had to lean on her as she led me to Fleet’s chair by the fire. ‘Muito rápido…’ she scolded when I tried to pull it nearer the flames. She rapped her heart with her fist. ‘It stops.’ She pressed a bowl of hot chocolate into my hands and ordered me to drink. I tried to ask her about Kitty, but either she couldn’t understand or I had lost my wits with the cold – my words felt jumbled and heavy on my tongue, my thoughts slow and confused. I drank the chocolate through chattering teeth and slowly returned to my senses.
At some signal Fleet’s men gathered themselves and headed out again. Best not to think of the business they planned. One of them paused at my chair, shrugging on his coat. ‘She’s with Gabriela.’
I tumbled down the stairs, drunk with exhaustion, clinging to the walls as I searched each room. At last, I found her.
She was lying in a small cot, buried under several blankets, red hair wrapped in a velvet cap for warmth. A dark-haired woman was sitting by her side, singing softly in Portuguese. Gabriela, Fleet’s wife. Sam’s mother. There was beauty in her features, her smooth complexion, her black curls streaked with silver. A great, grave beauty – save for the long scar on her face. It curved from temple to jaw, puckering her cheek and dragging down the corner of her right eye.
She beckoned me forward. ‘For one moment.’
I stumbled to the bed. A lantern cast an amber light across the blankets, but Kitty’s skin was white as marble and her lips were tinged blue. I took her hand, pressed my face to hers to be sure she was still breathing. ‘She’s so cold.’
Gabriela put a hand on my shoulder. ‘You must rest.’
I shook my head, and the room spun around me. I had to stay awake and look after Kitty. But I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I lay down next to her. She didn’t move. It was as if I were lying next to a stone statue on a tomb.
Fleet entered the room and spoke quietly with Gabriela by the fire. They sounded worried.
Strong arms pulled me from the bed and lifted me away. I was too weak to protest. Another room, men asleep on the floor. A bed, warmed with a bed pan. Blankets thrown over my shaking body. In my fevered state I thought I was back in the river – that our escape had all been a dream. The blankets were waves and I was sinking down, the icy river closing above my head. The water roared in my ears. I reached for Kitty but I couldn’t find her. I was alone in an empty ocean. I slipped away beneath the waves, drowning in darkness.
Chapter Fifteen
A warm dry bed. Sunlight on my closed eyes. Shouts and drunken curses rising from the streets, the rumble of carts and the scrape of a fiddle. A dog barking. It had all been there at the edge of my senses, seeping into my dreams. I swallowed, mouth dry, and rolled over. Groaned as pain bounced about my skull.
‘Awake!’ a voice yelled, delighted. ‘Awake, awake, awake!’
I opened my eyes a crack. A tiny, dark-eyed child was leaning over me, her face inches from mine. Three more girls lined the bed, whispering and watching me with keen interest. Sam’s sisters, without question – all variations upon the same theme, with dark, clever eyes and raven hair, and all dressed in drab, faded gowns, restitched to fit. The oldest girl had tucked a wisp of gauze about her neck, bright scarlet flecked with gold. It burned in the morning sun like a jewel, or a warning. She lifted her baby sister from the bed and kissed her curls. ‘Run and tell Pa, Bia.’
I was desperate to leave the room and find Kitty, but a light shuffle beneath my blankets revealed that I was quite naked. Exposing myself in front of James Fleet’s daughters did not seem wise.
After some whispering and giggles, the eldest girl introduced herself as Eva. ‘Becky. Sofia,’ she added, indicating her sisters.
‘You snore,’ Becky informed me.
Eva hushed her. ‘You’re teaching Sam to be a gent.’
Becky and Sofia sniggered at the thought of such an impossible task. I sat up, as much as was decent, holding the blankets to my chest. ‘In a fashion…’
Eva touched her neckerchief. ‘Might I make a lady d’you think, sir? I should like to wear fine clothes and-’
‘Out. All of you. Damned hussies.’ Fleet stood in the doorway, holding Bia in the crook of one arm. From his hot, crabbed expression I guessed that he had not asked his daughters to stand sentinel over my bed. As they ran laughing from the room, he blocked Eva’s path. ‘What’s this?’ he snapped, tugging a handful of the scarlet gauze. ‘Take it off, child.’
‘I’m indoors, Pa,’ she wailed, clutching it back to her chest. ‘No one can see.’
As father and daughter argued, Bia struggled free and clambered back on to the bed. She scrunched her way up to my shoulder and put a dimpled hand to my face, dark eyes sombre. ‘Bad man gone?’