‘Aye, madam. You must look upon him, if you can, and name him your husband so that there can be no doubt it is he.’ The man hadn’t blinked since she opened the door. Rachel couldn’t keep her eyes still.
‘Very well,’ she whispered.
She followed Roger Cadwaller for a few minutes, down Stall Street and into Horse Street, then off into a tiny alley. The day was dead and cold; a steady drizzle sifted down from low clouds. The constable stopped by a set of narrow steps and guided her down them, between tall flanking buildings, to a damp and shadowy courtyard. From there he led her to a door that hung off-kilter, its black paint peeling and flaking away. The constable knocked, and they were admitted at once. I must seem surprised, and grief-struck. Rachel put one hand to her mouth in sudden outrage at her own dispassion. Her steps faltered, and she threw out her other arm to the wall for support. Neither Roger Cadwaller nor the wizened old undertaker who inhabited the place spared more than a glance at such behaviour. I am not surprised. I am not grief-struck. I am horrified. Rachel’s stomach and legs felt watery weak. She absolutely did not want to look at Richard’s dead body, but the two men led her on inexorably. Down more steps was a vaulted cellar, cold, dimly lit by a single pane of smeared glass in a high slot of a window. There, on a wooden table, stripped down to his drawers, lay Richard Weekes. There was an odd ringing in Rachel’s ears, and the room and everything in it seemed to recede from her. No, it is I who am receding. She moved unsteadily to stand beside him.
Richard’s hair was matted with river mud and shreds of weed, but his skin was flawless and pale, unmarked by any injury. Yet even without a wound on him, there was no chance of making believe he was still alive. Something about his stillness, the way he seemed smaller than he once had, the marble smoothness of his face – all screamed of lifelessness. He had no more scent than the stone walls around him. Rachel knew that if she touched him he would be cool, and too solid; the flesh gone dense and leaden without the spirit to buoy it up. The hair on his chest and arms looked too dark, too wiry. His mouth was closed but his jaw had fallen slack, robbing him of the firm line his chin normally took; his eyelids were swollen and purplish. But even so, even lifeless, his face was beautiful. Rachel stared at it for a long time, and couldn’t tell what she was feeling. You did not love me, but you did love. You were violent, but you did not mean to kill. You never forgave your father for the loss of your mother, but he also did not mean to kill. Was there good in you, or only bad? She came up with all these questions and more, but no answers; her heart was empty – she had no grief for him.
‘It is him,’ she said, long moments later when the undertaker had begun to fidget with impatience.
‘My thanks, madam,’ said the constable, in his smooth, unfeeling voice.
‘How came he to… be in the river?’
‘We shan’t know, madam. He had no quarrel that any saw or knew of. The men who pulled him out pressed him well, to force the water from him in hopes of reviving him. The dregs that came out were ripe with the red tape.’
‘The red tape?’
‘Brandy, madam,’ said the constable. Rachel blinked, and nodded to show she’d understood.
‘The water’s cold as a witch’s kiss, missus,’ said the undertaker. ‘Like as not he stumbled in, beetle-headed and boozy, and was undone by the bite o’ it before he even knew hisself drowned.’ The constable winced at the man’s rough speech.
‘I see,’ Rachel whispered.
‘The river men that knew him said he was a man who was wont to… sample too much of his own wares,’ said the constable.
‘He was a borachio, just like his father before him,’ Rachel said flatly. I’ll make no excuses for you, Richard. ‘It was rarer to see him sober than otherwise.’ They stood a moment longer in silence, each one watching Richard’s pale corpse as though it might sit up and nod ruefully in confirmation of its fate. If they’re waiting for me to kiss him farewell, they’ll wait for ever. ‘Have you told his father of this ill fortune?’
‘No, madam. Do you know his whereabouts?’
‘Yes.’ Rachel turned her back on her late husband. ‘I will tell him all that’s happened. And I will be back to make arrangements for the burial,’ she said to the undertaker.
‘As it please ye, missus.’ The old man nodded. With that Rachel fled the room, hurrying out of the cellar, along the alley and up onto Horse Street, where she gasped in a huge lungful of mucky air to dispel the scentless, stony pall of death.
She walked slowly to Duncan Weekes’s rooms, carrying with her the worst tidings a parent can ever be given. She thumped on the street door until her knuckles and the heels of her hands were stinging, and eventually a grey-haired woman in a filthy dress, red-eyed and white-lipped, let her in with a scowl. Rachel went downstairs and knocked at Duncan’s door for some minutes; there was no sound of movement from within, so she tried the latch. The door was not locked; it swung open with a creak.
Inside it was as frigid as ever, and shadows lurked in all the corners. There was no fire in the hearth; no candles or lamps alight. A sour smell hit her, and by the overturned hearthside chair she saw a splatter of vomit on the floor. Rachel looked towards the bed with a mounting, stifling sense of the inevitable. Duncan Weekes lay there, huddled under his blankets so that only his face was showing. He was as still and lifeless as his son. Rachel crouched beside him.
‘Mr Weekes? Father?’ she said, though she knew it was futile. The old man’s eyes were screwed tight shut, brows beetled and drawn together; his mouth was slightly open, lips blackened. The old woman who’d opened the door for Rachel appeared behind her, and peered over her shoulder at the corpse.
‘The barrel fever, no doubt,’ she said, with a sniff. ‘Or mayhap the old man’s friend. I’ve heard his churchyard cough, these past few nights.’
Absently, Rachel tucked the blankets tighter around Duncan’s chin. I knew he was sick, yet I did nothing, and let it slip from my mind. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Weekes,’ she whispered, stricken. There are no kindnesses.
‘I’ve a boy you can send for the undertaker, if you’ve a penny for him,’ said the old woman.
‘Very well.’ Rachel found a coin in her pocket. ‘He is Duncan Weekes, and his son Richard Weekes lies with the undertaker behind Horse Street.’
‘I know the one.’
‘Fetch the same man, if you please. Father and son can lie together awhile. I’d always hoped to reunite them.’
‘Fate will play these cruel japes on us,’ said the woman, nodding. The coin vanished into the palm of her bony hand and Rachel left, walking away with a feeling that her head was swelling; it felt light, and strange. How truly I spoke, when I said that I had no one.
More than ever before, Rachel felt apart from everything and everyone else. She walked for a long time, and felt invisible; as though she was less real in the world than the people she passed. I could vanish without trace; just like Abi. Just like Alice. She felt like a boat with its line cut, and nothing to keep the current from tugging her away. She was laden and heavy with guilt and sorrow, so much that she could hardly feel anything. Just the ringing echo of it all in the big empty space inside her.
The city closed in on itself for the night. Lamps were lit and shutters closed; the doors of inns swung to against the weather, and people hurried towards their homes, not dallying in the street with the drizzle and the leaching cold. These three days have been the longest I have ever lived. Rachel tried to imagine what life would be like from that moment; with no husband, no family; no visits to Jonathan or causes to hope. Will the Suttons still be my friends? I am a threat to them, and the captain blames me for Jonathan’s fall. It seemed impossible that she should be expected to continue, to bear it all. Weary and shivering, she reached Abbeygate Street and climbed the steps. Inside there would be no welcoming warmth or light for her; yet however sad a place it was, it was her only home. As Rachel pushed the door a scrap of pale paper caught her eye, fluttering across the boards like a tiny ghost. She bent and picked up the note, returning to the streetlamp outside for the light to read it by. She read it twice and then shut her eyes, sinking onto a nearby step as a storm of joy and relief took her balance. Mr Alleyn asks for you. Come at once. Starling.