She answered softly, 'Then let us make the most of it.'
Tom Ozzard paused to lean against a stone balustrade to find his bearings, and was surprised he was not out of breath. The little man had been walking for hours, sometimes barely conscious of his whereabouts but at the back of his mind very aware of his eventual destination.
Along the Thames embankment, then crisscrossing through dingy side-streets where the shabby eaves almost touched overhead as if to shut out the daylight. Around him at every turn was the London he remembered as if it were yesterday Teeming with life and street cries, the air rank with horse dung and sewers. On one corner was a man bawling out his wares, fresh oysters in a barrel, where several seamen were trying their taste and washing them down with rough ale. Ozzard had seen the river several times on his walk. From LondonBridge to the Isle of Dogs it was crammed with merchantmen, their masts and yards swaying together on the tide like a leafless forest.
In the noisy inns along the river sailors jostled the painted whores and flung away their pay on beer and geneva, not knowing when or if they might ever return once their ships had weighed. None of them seemed at all perturbed by the grisly, rotting remains of some pirates which dangled in chains at Execution Dock.
Ozzard caught his breath; his feet had brought him to the very street as if he had had no part in it.
He found that his breathing was sharper as he hesitated before forcing his legs to carry him along the cobbled roadway It was like a part of his many nightmares. Even the light, dusky orange as evening closed in on the wharves and warehouses of London's dockland; it was said that there were more thieves and cut-throats in this part of London than in all the rest of the country. This was or had been a respectable street on Wapping Wall. Small, neat houses owned or rented by shopkeepers and clerks, agents from the victualling yards and honest chandlers.
A shaft of low sunshine reflected from the top window of his old house. He caught his breath. As if it was filled with blood.
Ozzard stared around wildly his heart thumping as if to tear itself free from his slight body It was madness; he was mad. He should never have come, there might still be folk here who remembered him. But when Bolitho had come to London he had accompanied him in another carriage. Allday Yovell and himself. Each so,. different, and yet each one a part of the other.
Hardly daring to move, he turned his head to look at the shop directly opposite the row of neat houses.
On that horrific day when he had run from his home, heedless of the blood on his hands, he had paused only to stare at this same shop. Then it had been titled, Tom Ozzard, Scrivener. Now he had enlarged the premises and had added amp; Son to his name.
He thought of the time when the surgeon Sir Piers Blachford had spoken out about this same scrivener, and had remarked that it was the only time he had heard the name Ozzard. He had nearly collapsed. Why did I come?
'You lookin' fer somethin', matey?'
Ozzard shook his head. 'No. Thank you.' He turned away to conceal his face.
'Suit yerself.' The unknown man lurched away towards a tavern which Ozzard knew lay behind the shops. Knew, because he had paused there for a glass of ginger beer on his way home. The lawyer who had employed him as his senior clerk had sent him off early to show his appreciation for all the extra work he had done. If only he had not stopped for a drink. Even as the hazy idea formed in his mind he knew he was deluding himself. She must have been laughing at him for months. Waiting for him to go to his office near Billingsgate, then for her lover to come to her. Surely others in the street must have known or guessed what was happening? Why hadn't someone told him?
He leaned against a wall and felt the vomit rising in his throat.
So young and beautiful. She had been lying in her lover's arms when he had walked in unsuspectingly from the street. It had been a sunny day, full of promise, just as today had started out.
The screams began again, rising to a piercing screech as the axe had smashed down on their nakedness. Again, again, and again, until the room had been like some of the sights he had seen since he had met with Richard Bolitho.
He did not hear the heavy tramp of feet and the clink of weapons until a voice shouted, 'You there! Stand and be examined! '
He could barely stop himself shaking as he turned and saw the press gang poised on the corner he had just come around. Not like the ones you saw in fishing villages or naval seaports. These men were armed to the teeth as they hunted for likely recruits in an area which was crammed with sailors, nearly all of whom would
have the right papers, the 'Protection' to keep them free of the navy.
A massive gunner's mate, a cudgel hanging from his wrist, a cutlass thrust carelessly through his belt, said, 'Wot's this then?' He peered at Ozzard's blue coat with the bright gilt buttons, the buckled shoes beloved by sailors whenever they had funds enough to buy them. 'You're no sailor, I'll be damn sure o' that! ' He put a hand on Ozzard's shoulder and swung him round to face his grinning party of seamen. 'What say you, lads?'
Ozzard said shakily, 'I-I do serve-'
'Stand aside! ' A lieutenant pushed through his men and regarded Ozzard curiously. 'Speak up, fellow! The Fleet needs more hands.' He ran his eye over Ozzard's frail person. 'What ship, if serve you do?'
'I-I am servant to Sir Richard Bolitho.' He found he was able to look up at the lieutenant without flinching. 'ViceAdmiral of the Red. He is presently in London.'
The lieutenant asked, 'Hyperion-was she your last ship?' All his impatience had gone. As Ozzard nodded he said, 'Be off with you, man. This is no place for honest people after dark.'
The gunner's mate glanced at his lieutenant as if for consent, then pressed some coins into Ozzard's fist.
''Ere, go an' get a good wet. Reckon you've bloody earned it after wot you must 'er seen an' done! '
Ozzard blinked and nearly broke down. A wet. What Allday would have said. His whole being wanted to scream at them. Didn't they see the name on the shop front? What would they have said had he told them how he had run most of the way to Tower Hill to seek out a recruiting party? In those days there was always one hanging around near the taverns and the theatre. Ready to ply some drunken fool with rum before they signed him on in a daze of patriotic fervour. How would they have behaved if he'd described what he had left behind in that quiet little house? He made himself look at it. The window was no longer in the sun.
When he turned the press gang had vanished, and for a second longer he imagined it was another part of the torment, the stab of guilt which left him no peace. Then he looked down at his hand and opened the fingers while his body began to shake uncontrollably There were the coins the gunner's mate had given him. 'I don't want your pity.' The coins jangled across the cobbles as he flung them into the lengthening shadows. 'Leave me alone! '
He heard someone call out, saw a curtain move in the house next to the one which had once been his. But nobody came.
He sighed and turned his back on the place, and the shop with his stolen name on the front.
Somewhere in the warren of alleys he heard a sudden scuffle, someone bellow with pain, then silence. The press gang had found at least one victim who would awake with a bloody head aboard the Thames guardship.
Ozzard thrust his hands into his coat pockets and began the long walk back to that other part of London.
His small figure was soon lost in the shadows, while behind him, the house was as before. Waiting.
Just a few miles upstream from Wapping where Ozzard had made his despairing pilgrimage, Bolitho bent over to offer his hand to Catherine, and assist her from the wherry in which they had crossed the Thames. It was early darkness, the cloudless sky pin-pointed with countless stars: a perfect evening to begin what Catherine had promised to be 'a night of enchantment.'
Bolitho put some money into the wherryman's hand, with a little extra so that he would be here to carry them back across the swirling black river. The man had a cheeky grin, and had not taken his eyes off Catherine while he had pulled his smart little craft lustily over the choppy water.
Bolitho did not blame him. She had been standing in Lord Browne's hallway beneath a glittering chandelier when he had come down the staircase. In a gown of shot silk, very like the one she had worn that night in Antigua when he had met her again for the first time after so long. Catherine loved green, and her gown seemed to change from it to black as she had turned towards him. It was low-cut to reveal her throat and the full promise of her breasts. Her hair was piled high, and he had seen that she was wearing the same filigree earrings which had been his firstever gift to her. The ones she had somehow managed to sew into her clothing when she had been forced into the Waites prison.
The wherryman flashed him a broad grin. 'I'll be 'ere, Admiral-nah you go off an' enjoy yerselves! '
