The Fire Court: A gripping historical thriller from the bestselling author of The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor

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      Yesterday’s conversation with Sam flooded into my mind. The crossing-sweeper. Clifford’s Inn. Where the lawyers are. Those creatures of the devil. And, before that, my father talking deluded nonsense about my mother, and the woman on the couch, and closing her eyes.

      I picked up the paper and smoothed it out. It was a strip torn from a larger sheet. Written on it were the words ‘Twisden, Wyndham, Rainsford, DY’.

      Margaret refilled my pot. ‘It wasn’t there last week, master.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      She ignored the question, treating it with the contempt it deserved.

      My brain was still fighting yesterday’s fumes. I screwed up my eyes and tried to focus on the words. First, the three names. Then two initials. DY – a name so well known that initials sufficed for it?

      ‘Bring me a roll and some butter.’

      She went away. I sat there, staring into nothing. Clifford’s Inn. A scrap of paper stained with blood. A few names. It unsettled me that my father’s ramblings had contained a grain of sense. He really had strayed into a place of lawyers. But he could have picked the paper up anywhere.

      The door from the yard opened and closed. There were footsteps in the scullery passage, and the tap of a crutch on the flagged floor.

      Sam appeared in the kitchen doorway. He jerked his head towards the scullery passage and the back door. ‘Barty’s in the yard.’

      I stared at him.

      ‘He won’t get any scraps out of me at this hour,’ Margaret said tartly. ‘Tell him to come back after dinner.’

      ‘Hold your tongue, woman.’ Sam looked at me. ‘Barty, master. The crossing-sweeper who saw your father. You told me to find him for you. Do you remember? In the Devil?’

      Suddenly I was sober, or I felt I was. I stood up, knocking over the bench. ‘Bring him in.’

      ‘Best that you go out to him, master.’ Margaret wrinkled her nose. ‘If you’d be so kind. He stinks.’

      ‘You’ll give him something to eat,’ I said. ‘Take it out to him.’

      ‘Something you should know, sir,’ Sam said. ‘Barty says he saw your father again.’

      ‘What the devil are you talking about?’

      Sam’s voice was gentle. ‘On Friday morning. As well as on Thursday.’

      There was a moment of silence. My mouth was open. Margaret stood with a pan in her hand, leaning forward to put it on the fire, as still as a statue.

      I swallowed. I said slowly, ‘Last Friday, you mean? The day my father died?’

      Sam nodded.

      ‘Did he see what happened?’

      ‘He’ll only speak to you. I’m no use to him. You’re the one with the purse.’

      Margaret whimpered softly. She set the pan on the fire.

      ‘Why didn’t he tell us sooner?’

      ‘He was taken up for debt that very afternoon. It’s only yesterday evening his mother raised the money to get him out of prison.’

      Sam hopped down the passage and into the yard. I followed. Over his shoulder, I saw the crossing-sweeper sitting on the side of the trough that caught the rainwater. He was huddled in a filthy cloak with his hat drawn low over his ears. He was a crooked man with a sallow countenance.

      When he saw us, he sprang up and executed a clumsy bow. Then he shrank back into his cloak as if he wanted to make himself as small as possible.

      ‘Sam says you saw my father on the day he died,’ I said. ‘As well as the day before, when you brought him back here.’

      Barty nodded so violently that his hat fell off, exposing a bald patch covered in scabs, below which a fringe of greasy hair straggled towards his shoulders. He licked his lips. ‘You won’t make me go before a justice, master? Please, sir.’

      ‘Not if you tell me the truth.’

      ‘I done nothing wrong.’ He looked from me to Sam with the eyes of a dog that fears a beating.

      ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘You won’t be the poorer for it.’

      ‘It was like Thursday, master. He came out of Clifford’s Inn again, down to Fleet Street. He was in a terrible hurry, and he knocked against a bookstall there, and the bookseller swore at him …’

      Sam nudged him with his elbow. ‘Tell his honour the rest.’

      Barty screwed up his face. ‘He was looking back over his shoulder. As if someone was chasing him.’

      ‘What?’ I snapped. ‘Who?’

      ‘Couldn’t see, sir. There was a wagon coming down from St Paul’s, and a coach coming the other way, under the Bar. But I thought I’d go over and give the old fellow a helping hand, like I done the other day.’

      ‘Hoping it would be worth your while,’ Sam said. ‘You don’t have to tell us all that. Go on.’

      ‘Well …’ Barty looked at me, and then away. ‘That’s when it happened. The old man tripped – fell into the road – in front of the wagon. But I heard …’

      I seized his collar and dragged him towards me. Part of me wanted to shake the life out of him. ‘What did you hear?’

      ‘His screams, master. His screams.’

      I let the wretch go. He fell back against the trough. I was trembling.

      ‘And next?’ I said.

      ‘All the traffic stopped. I went over the road to see if …’

      ‘If there were pickings to be had?’

      He tried to give me an ingratiating smile. ‘He was alive still, sir. Just. There was a crowd around him. But he looked up and he saw me there among them. I swear he saw me, master, I swear he did. He knew me. I know he did. He said … Rook. Where’s the rook?’

      ‘Rook,’ I said. ‘Rook? What rook?’

      Barty stared up at me. ‘I don’t know what he meant, master. But I know he was scared of something.’

      ‘What else?’ I demanded.

      ‘That’s all he said, master. Then he was gone.’

      Later that morning there was a knocking at the door. Sam announced that the tailor had come to wait on me.

      I had quite forgotten the appointment, perhaps because I did not want to remember it. Death is a dreary business, time-consuming and expensive, and so is its aftermath. But it would not be right in the eyes of the СКАЧАТЬ