Wickedness (11 page)

Accident and Emergency. She had never seen one this busy before. And they’d been loads of times to the one near her old house. Micky always seemed to be breaking things; a toe, a leg, a finger. Always falling out of trees, off her skateboard or bike.

It was totally manic. People everywhere. Noise. Bright fluorescent light. She had no idea what to do. There was a reception desk, but the woman behind it was harassed, didn’t listen to what Claire was saying, told her to take a ticket from the machine, sit down and wait her turn. Claire tried to say that it was her mum and sister who were the patients, but the woman was on the phone now and shooed her away with a hand. Claire took a ticket. Number 45. But a nurse had only just called out 38.

She went and sat down on the only spare seat, between a woman with a black eye and a man nursing a clumsily bandaged hand, dripping blood,
and sat there in a daze. Her arms and legs felt heavy. She could hardly move them. A headache was starting. The top of her skull was so sensitive that even touching it with the tips of her fingers was painful. Her throat was tightening up. Her eyes felt dry and sore. She looked up at the clock on the wall. Two minutes past midnight. She registered that it was now officially her birthday, and that
he
was taking a long time to park the car. Perhaps he’d gone home and left her? Yes! But how would she get home if he had? She didn’t have more than a couple of pounds and her mum never had much either, using her card to pay for everything. She wanted her dad. That was all she could think of. An adult to come and lift the weight of responsibility off her shoulders. It was too heavy. She didn’t want it. Wasn’t old enough, even at 14, to take it.

“Forty-five. Number forty-five!” Someone was calling out her number. She held up her hand. Half stood up. A nurse holding a clipboard was threading her way towards her. Claire sank back down onto her seat and let the nurse come and hunker down beside her. She was brisk and efficient. As soon as Claire told her the story, she took down her mum and her sister’s names. Told
Claire she’d go and find out what was happening to them and come back when she knew anything. She stood up, patting Claire on the shoulder and telling her not to worry. She was sure everything would be fine.

Claire thought about ringing her dad again. She took her mobile out of her backpack. But she ought to go outside to do that. And supposing the nurse came back then and couldn’t find her? No one was looking. She’d send a text. She checked there was a signal then surreptitiously keyed in ‘
At hospital. Urgent. Call me.
’ She tried to send it, but the screen just flashed ‘
Message sending failed
’. Oh no. She slipped the phone into her jeans back pocket. And soon the nurse was back and carrying the little wax doll they’d had to prise, she said, from Micky’s hand. “Better if you look after it,” she said, with a shudder. “Gives me the creeps.”

Claire was sitting there clutching it, when
Robert
came.

“There weren’t any spaces. I had to drive round for ages before I could find somewhere.” And while he was talking, he took the wax doll out of her hand. “See. It’s melting in the heat. It’s all
squashed now. No use at all.” He pocketed it.

Good. He could have her mum’s too. Before it melted and made a mess. Claire unzipped her mum’s bag. Fished around inside. But there was no wax doll.

“Never mind,” he said. “It helped.”

Helped? What
was
he talking about? Her mum and her sister had nearly died.

“Has anything happened yet?” he said calmly. “Is there any news?”

It wasn’t until two in the morning that the nurse was able to tell them anything. She’d taken Claire and Robert into a side room and was sitting opposite Claire and leaning in towards her and looking earnestly into her eyes.

“It’s not bird flu. That’s for certain. We think it’s some sort of poison, but we don’t know what yet. I shouldn’t tell you this.” She looked a bit embarrassed. “But the doctor Googled the symptoms and they’re a perfect fit for aconite poisoning. But that’s incredibly rare. Is there anywhere they could have come across it?” Now
the nurse was looking up at Robert, who was standing close behind Claire’s chair.

It couldn’t have been
his
‘medicine’, could it? Had he given some to her mum and Micky? Should she say something? She could feel his hand resting on her shoulder. Just the touch of his fingers, but enough to make her feel afraid. He shook his head.

“We stomach-pumped them both, just to be on the safe side. And we’ve given them the antidote for aconite.”

She could feel Robert’s thumb pressing in on her neck; his fingers fan out over her collar bone.

“But it will take a few hours yet for it to work. After that we’ll move them up into the wards. You can come in and see them now, if you like. But then I’d go home if I were you. Have you got hold of your dad yet?”

My mother never did wake again. Though Nicholas lifted her up and carried her back to the house. Though he gave her more of his medicine and bled her copiously.

I watched as the life drained out of her and felt a terrible pain in my heart at it. My mother, the very last of my flesh and blood. For my brother had died at birth and I had no aunts or uncles that I knew of, no grandparents for they were long dead.

“If only we had the 21st spell, Margrat, then we might bring her back to life again,” he sighed, “But it is not time yet…”

“And no one has the em…” I quickly swallowed my words. I had never heard Nicholas talk of the Emerald Casket, and did not want him to hear of it from me, or know more of my meeting with Christophe.

Now my mother was dead, Nicholas and I dug her grave together and she was buried alongside my father. In the darkness I faced the stark truth. I was alone and had no one to care for me.

But it seemed that Nicholas thought differently, saying, the very minute we were out of the black, suffocating heat of the cellar, that I must leave the house and go with him. “It is not safe for you to stay here Margrat… a young girl, all alone. Besides…” And this is when he told me, “Your mother has left a will making me your guardian.”

I said that I did not believe him.

He took me into the parlour then and, with a key he took from his pocket, opened the box seat of my mother’s oak chair. Inside was a will, written in her hand… I knew it well… and bearing her true signature, Catherine Jennet. It was dated the third day of September. Just yesterday.

Nicholas watched me as I picked up the will, let it curl back into a roll. Was quick to stay my hand as, seeing a candle still alight on the mantlepiece, I thought to catch the will in the flame and burn it.

There was no time to pack. Nicholas was in a hurry to be gone. Besides, he said, it was dangerous to take clothing and linens and the like, for they might harbour infection. Though I noticed that he was careful to tuck the will inside his coat. “No Margrat, you shall have all new things.”

New things. Once I would have danced and sung and clapped my hands in glee at the thought of it.

So I left the house with nothing but the clothes I stood up in and the ring still on its thread about my neck.

“I think it safer,” he said, as we stepped out into the lane, “if we go by the river.”

So we went, Nicholas holding my hand tight, not by the Ludgate, but on foot down St Peter’s Hill to Poles Wharf. All the while Nicholas looking about him.

“Who or what is it you are afraid of?” I asked, breathless, for he pulled me along at a great rate. “Not… the rope-walker… for he must have left the city.”

He did not answer, but gripped my hand more tightly and would not even let go when I stumbled and fell to my knees. Instead he pulled me up so sharply I yelped in pain. And it wasn’t until we reached the wharf and Nicholas was handing me down into a wherry that I looked back and saw Christophe. I am
sure it was he, though he slipped from view as Nicholas took one last look about him and then jumped down into the boat.

I had not been out on the river for a long time. But it seemed busier than ever now. The waterman told us that many people, hoping to be spared the plague, had abandoned their houses and were living, whole families squeezed together, on boats. We passed many of these, at anchor in midstream and in rows of two or three or more together. The waterman rowed us on up, past Bridewell and the cloisters of Whitefriars. Midday now. The bells rang out across the water and the sun blazed down. The creak of the boat’s timbers, the rhythmic swish of the oars and the glitter and glint off the water, made me feel light-headed.

On past the great houses of Essex Place and Arundel Place and to Somerset House and its river stairs. The waterman expertly brought us in, shipped his oars and jumped out onto the wharf side to tie up. Nicholas jumped out himself and turned and held out his hand for me, pulling me up.

A lane led up from the river, alongside the garden wall of a big house. We went along it, Nicholas
holding my hand still. Then we passed into the Strand.

A little way down and set well back, we came to Nicholas’s house. It was three storeys high, brick-built and very fine, its many windows glittering in the bright September light. Plaster panels set between them, decorated in relief, with what I saw at once were Egyptian figures. It was different in every way from my own house, which was built of daub and wattle and had grown higgledy-piggledy over a great many years, with no clear plan in view. The architect of this house had a mind that was controlled and clear of purpose.

I straggled after the Doctor as he went up the front steps. Taking a key from his coat pocket, he unlocked the great carved oak door. It swung open and I followed Nicholas into blackness; for all the shutters were closed and there were no candles lit.

It had been hot as an oven outside. Now the cold struck up through the stone floor and made me shiver.

It is like a tomb, I thought. And even when Nicholas folded back the shutters and light flooded in, the chill remained. Now I could see that there was panelling to the walls and fine plaster moulding on the ceiling. There was an immense chimney piece with pillars of jet, but no fire lit.

It had the feel of a mausoleum. And there were no
servants anywhere to be seen. They must have all run away, I thought, like Jane. There was a carved oak chair by the fireplace. I sat down heavily upon it. I looked down at my filthy skirts, my muddied shoes; at my hands grimed with black. I had not washed or changed my clothes or cleaned my teeth for days and days. And I had not noticed that I stank, until now, for the whole world had smelled the same.

“You need to bathe,” Nicholas said, as if reading my mind. “I have clean clothes already laid out upon your bed.”

My bed…

“Come…” He held out his hand and I let him pull me up. For what else could I do? What other choices did I have?

We walked up the wide oak staircase and he showed me the room that was to be my bedchamber with its high carved bed and silk-embroidered hangings. There were tapestries on the walls and richly patterned carpets on the floor. A basin and ewer filled with clean water stood on a chest. Soap that smelled sweetly of roses and honeysuckle. Fine linens to dry myself. A tortoiseshell comb and looking glass in a frame embroidered with flowers. Toothpowder, hair curling papers and perfumes. And laid out on the bed,
the finest cotton shift, trimmed with lace. A skirt and bodice in silk taffeta; soft mourning grey, the colour of a pigeon’s wing. Beautiful, beautiful things.

Then, when I was left alone and I had stepped out of my old clothes and I was quite naked, except for the braid and the ring, I took up the mirror and looked in it and hardly knew myself. For the child Margrat had gone and could never come back now.

I washed slowly and carefully. I dried myself; breathed in the heady smell of roses and honeysuckle. I combed my hair until it shone and rippled over my shoulders like liquid bronze. I took the shift from the bed and let it drop over my head. I pulled on the skirt and laced up the bodice. I slipped stockinged feet into buckled and embroidered shoes. All fitted perfectly… as if he had the measure of me already.

Then I walked from the room and down the stairs and into my new life.

I had been wrong in believing there were no servants. There was one. She served us that first day at table. She was a slight, mousy-haired girl, who scurried about bringing in dishes of meats and bread and
salads; filling our glasses with wine and saying nothing above a whisper. A timid-seeming little thing, who quivered when the Doctor spoke to her.

Her name was Martha, but I never did find out much else about her, all the time I was there. Except I might trust her with my life.

She flitted about the house from sunrise to sunset, keeping the sea coals banked up in the fires, the floors swept and dusting all the many curios the Doctor had collected on his travels: pottery from ancient Athens. Marble statues from Rome. Exquisitely illuminated manuscripts. Wall hangings. One of St George slaying the Dragon, that always made me stop and look up at it. Then there were the books. On all manner of subjects: philosophy, theology, medicine, alchemy, the magic arts.

And Nefertaru.

It had been a shock to see her mummy case standing in the far corner of the library, for I had thought she was still on show at the Head and Combe. Now she was a constant reminder of things I wished to forget, so I kept away from the library.

But there was one room that was never swept or dusted. It was Nicholas’s study on the second floor of the house, directly above my bedchamber and with the same view over the Strand. He kept it locked at all
times, even when he was at work there. Which I quickly noticed followed a pattern. He rose early, before dawn, and said prayers in his study. I could hear the steady rise and fall of his voice and I knew that he burned incense, for the house filled with its bittersweet smell. Cassia, myrrh, aloes – the sweet smell, so the Bible tells, of our Lord Jesus.

Then after breakfast, he went out and often did not return until late afternoon. I know that he went to purchase herbs brought ashore at Fresh Wharf. I believe he was also physician to a number of high-born people. What else he did, I was never sure but sometimes, when he came home, he brought presents for me: shoes and a beautiful silver necklace to thread the ring through, as he feared the red braid might fray and break.

No visitors ever called at the house. I thought that strange. I saw no one but Nicholas and Martha. No, that is not true, for I watched the world from my bedroom window. And one morning I saw Christophe. Or thought I saw him.

I opened the window, leaned out, called his name (Nicholas had gone out early or I would not have dared do it). But whoever it was did not turn around and had soon disappeared into Little Drury Lane.

At first I was wary of Nicholas, though I felt such
an attraction to him. Perhaps that was why I asked if Martha might sleep on a truckle in my bedchamber. But Nicholas said she went home at night. So I kept my door locked instead and the candle burning. I listened for footsteps on the stair, the turn of the doorknob, hushed breathing. I fell into a troubled sleep, haunted by the ghosts of my dead father and mother. I dreamed of them; they were running through the streets and alleyways, just ahead of me and forever out of reach. I would wake at first light, in tears and to the sound of the Nicholas’s prayers, the smell of his incense enveloping me, but the door still locked and the candle gone out.

So it was that those first few weeks drifted by. Nicholas did nothing to make me feel uneasy. He said nothing about the Book of Thoth or Sekhmet. Nothing about the spell. And if I worried he might know of the Emerald Casket, he said nothing that made me fearful. It was as if he had forgotten all about the 21st spell, or was reconciled to its loss.