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Chapter Eight

Viv stared at the stone steps leading down from the water gate to a cluster of open skiffs bobbing on the dull sage surface of the river. The wooden hulls knocked together with the restless movement of wavelets lapping the shingle. Gulls cried overhead. Memories stirred fixing her in place on the first stair. As she reached out a hand to keep her balance, Mr. Larkin called up to her.

“Don’t touch that wall, Viv. Mind your skirts don’t brush it either.”

She glanced at the vivid reeking band of green along the boards beside her and pulled her skirts close. She’d not been on the river since she’d come to London, but the stink was familiar. She was trying to place where she’d smelled it when Mr. Larkin gripped her elbow, steadying her as she descended.

At the river’s edge pebbles crunched under her sturdy half-boots, and a rough young waterman, red-bearded and muscled, a billowing white shirt rolled up over his strong arms, offered a hand to lift her into his skiff. She stepped in and stiffened against the rocking under her feet, an instant reminder of being on one of her stepfather’s unsettling sailing expeditions.

Captain Frank Pennington had a side business of helping gentlemen move their pleasure boats from Weymouth to other harbors along the southern coast. Occasionally he’d borrow one of those boats to take his girls out for a sail, usually after a quarrel with their mother. Where’s my navy? he’d yell. They were expected to leave their work unfinished over their mother’s objections, don jackets and caps, and line up for his inspection. He’d be his most charming self, leading them from their lodgings along the Strand past the statue of the old king to the long inlet lined with masts and gleaming decks. There he’d pick out some gentleman’s grand pleasure boat. Who’s for the Indies? he’d cry. Who’s for the Americas?

They’d head out to sea until the shore was a faint distant line, and she and her sisters were wet and shivering, their gloved hands frozen to lines or winch handles. In time, Viv realized that her unease on these adventures sprang not from the roughness of the waves or the darkness of the waters, but from the theft and the threat that her stepfather would not turn back, as if he were saying to their mother that he could charm her daughters away from her. Viv’s relief was always profound when he’d order them to come about. Is it tea time? he’d ask.

“Viv?” Mr. Larkin called her back to the present. “Bend your knees, or you’ll topple over.”

She did as he said. She didn’t want to think about her stepfather or what it meant that her sisters were still subject to his whims and that until the guide was published, she had so little to send them. Then she remembered the smell. The pickpocket had smelled like the river. She would add that detail to her notes later.

Mr. Larkin lifted their picnic basket and a rug into the little boat and stepped in beside her. She had agreed to his river expedition in order to get a story, two stories—his and the one about the great fire. She had to admit he’d made her curious, and the writer in her knew the value of a firsthand account of such an event.

“You owe me a story,” she said, sitting down on the forward bench.

“First, the ruins.” He settled beside her, leaning close, speaking into the gap between her bonnet and her cheek, a warm puff of breath that made her shiver. “Then, the picnic.”

The waterman pushed them off the shore and leapt in, taking his position in the stern of the little boat, and sliding his oars into locks. With a few pulls he turned the sharp nose of the skiff westward up the river, and with a few more dips of the oars, the incoming tide took them. The river boiled along, swift and swirling, its somber surface broken into jagged points of slate flashing in the sun. A breeze rushed over them, and the great city all but disappeared behind a fringe of shabby, sagging buildings along the water’s edge. It was a new perspective. Viv reached for her notebook and pencil, but the chop on the water made notetaking impossible.

Dozens of vessels rode the current, from low, heavy barges strung together to single-masted boats with slanting sails, crisscrossing the river against the tide, and steam packets crammed with passengers, their paddlewheels churning and their tall stacks belching smoke.

Their waterman hailed the crew of a long string of barges rippling through the water. A conversation followed of which Viv understood hardly a word, but in a minute a competition had begun as their skiff raced the line of barges bearing down on one of the great round arches of Westminster Bridge. The bridge loomed over them as the boats converged on the narrow opening. They were nearly neck and neck with the heavy barge so close that Viv thought their near oar must touch the barge’s side. The bridge opening was clearly too narrow for both the fat barges and their skiff. They were doomed unless their waterman backed off. Instead, he gave a great pull on the port oar. The wooden skiff would be crushed against the stones.

Mr. Larkin wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Hang on,” he said.

Abruptly, the nose of the skiff dipped and the river sucked them down until they glided into the blackness under the bridge and shot through the other side into the flash of ripples well ahead of the barge. Viv sat stunned, clinging to Mr. Larkin, which was madness.

“You knew that would happen, didn’t you?”

“It’s a trick the watermen have,” he said. “Where the river’s flow narrows, the water speeds up and gives a lighter vessel the advantage over the heavier one.”

A trick. Viv’s heart returned to its regular beat. She shook off Mr. Larkin’s hold. It was the very thing she and Lady Melforth wanted to warn their unsuspecting readers of, whether writing of boatmen or hackney drivers, or any of the dozens of men who offered to help the unsuspecting female traveler navigate the great city.

The waterman turned their skiff toward the river’s north bank. At once the ruins of the burned palace appeared. The waters below the ruins made a calm pool beyond the reach of the current and the chop of the main channel. Viv took up her pencil and put it down at once. It was necessary simply to look at the ruined palace.

She had not anticipated the melancholy of the scene. Blue and gold streaks alternated on the water’s smooth surface reflecting both sky and ruins. Though it was six months since the fire, a smell of damp ash filled the air. Roofless and backless, the saffron stone walls faced the river with light streaming through the ancient tracery of the central arch. Other windows stared, empty black holes. The trees along the bank, as tall as the buildings themselves, stood blasted and withered like mourners, as if no spring would ever come to them again.

“You saw the fire?” she asked.

“From the bridge,” he said. Like her he seemed sobered by the scene.

“Tell me what you saw.” She bent her head to the little notebook.

Next to her on the bench, Mr. Larkin began to speak. “Black smoke was billowing when I arrived a little after sunset. Flames had burst some of the windows, streaming out in great orange tongues.”

“Where was the fire brigade?”

“Not on the river, the tide was low, so fire boats could not get near, nor could they fill their hoses. There was a great crowd on the bridge, but you couldn’t hear anyone speak over the roar of the fire.” He gestured to the span behind them. “You could feel the heat. Ash blew over the crowd, and showers of embers lit the sky. The flames turned the river orange. The moon was full and—”

Viv stopped her notetaking to give Mr. Larkin a glance. “And?”

“Red…like a…a wound in the sky.”