The King’s Evil. Andrew Taylor

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      LATE ON FRIDAY afternoon, the rain dashed against the big windows of the Drawing Office at the sign of the Rose in Henrietta Street. It had grown steadily heavier all day, whipped up by a stiff, westerly wind. If it grew much darker they would need to light the candles.

      Apart from the rain, the only sounds were the scratching of Mr Hakesby’s pen and the occasional creak of a floorboard, when Brennan, the draughtsman, shifted his weight from one foot to another. He was working on the detailed elevations for the Dragon Yard development by Cheapside, which was the main commission that Mr Hakesby had in hand at present.

      Catherine Lovett was standing at a slope placed at right angles to one of the windows. Her neck and shoulders ached. She had spent the last half-hour working on another job. She was inking in the quantities and materials in a panel at one side of the plan for one of the new warehouses by the docks.

      The careful, mechanical lettering was dull work, and the warehouse was a plain, uninteresting building, but Cat was thinking of something quite different – the garden pavilion project at Clarendon House, where she and Mr Hakesby had been working this morning. Mr Milcote had visited them to discuss the basement partition. Milcote was acting for his lordship in the matter, and she could not help thinking that their lives would be much more pleasant if all their clients were as agreeable and straightforward as that gentleman.

      She rubbed her eyes and stretched. As she was dipping the pen in the ink, there was a tap at the door. She laid the pen aside and went to answer the knock. That was another of her more tiresome duties, along with keeping the fire going, sweeping and scrubbing the floor, filling inkwells and sharpening pens.

      Cat found the porter’s boy on the landing, holding out a letter. It was addressed to Mr Hakesby in an untidy scrawl. She took it over to him. He was sitting huddled over the fire, though it was not a cold day, with a board resting over the arms of his chair so he had a surface for writing and drawing, when his hands were steady enough.

      Hakesby broke the seal and unfolded the letter. It trembled in his liver-spotted hands. There was another letter inside. He frowned and gave it to her. Her name – or rather the name she used in Henrietta Street, Mistress Jane Hakesby – was written on it in the same hand as the outer enclosure.

      ‘What is this?’ Hakesby said, his voice petulant. ‘There’s nothing for me here. Do you know anything of this?’

      Brennan looked up. He had sharp hearing and sharp wits.

      ‘No, sir,’ she said in a low voice.

      She concealed her irritation with Hakesby, for he was increasingly peremptory with her now that he had a double reason to expect her obedience. She opened the letter and scanned its contents.

       I must see you. I shall be in the New Exchange tomorrow afternoon, at about six o’clock. Look for me at Mr Kneller’s, the lace merchant in the upper gallery. Destroy this.

      The note was unsigned and undated. But there was only one person who could have written it. She dropped the paper into the glowing heart of the fire.

      ‘Jane!’ snapped Mr Hakesby. ‘Take it out at once. Who’s it from? Let me see.’

      It was too late. The flames licked the corner of the paper and then danced along one side. The letter blackened. For an instant, Cat saw one word – ‘destroy’ – but then the paper crumpled and fluttered and settled among the embers.

       CHAPTER FOUR