Page 137

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 1666

London is in particularly fine form tonight.

Well, if it weren't for the sweat trickling down my back into my arse crack and the clouds of dust kicked up every time another cart rattles past.

I fan myself as we walk beneath a line of washing strung between the houses, the cobblestones still radiating the afternoon's heat into the gathering darkness. A gust of warm air sweeps along the street, carrying the fishy stink of the nearby gutters straight into my face, and I wrinkle my nose in disgust. So much for a cooling breeze.

“Fresh oysters! Fine fresh oysters!”

I hold back a gag, only to nearly step into another heap of horse dung mixed with rotting cabbage and something I’d rather not identify. I snatch up my skirts just in time, saving the hem of my new gown from the filth. The deep-blue silk cost an outrageous amount, and after all the trouble of having the bodice fitted and lace sewn onto the cuffs, I'll be damned if London's streets are ruining it before I've worn it thrice.

“Quite all right?” Iscairn asks, offering me his arm.

“Oh, marvellous. A hundred and fifty bloody years I've been telling people to stop throwing their piss and shit into the streets, and what have the filthy bastards done? Built taller houses to throw it from.”

He chuckles, and I can't help grinning back. He hardly wears that bony beak and hat of his these days, thank goodness, though he still keeps them on the mantel at home. Funny, really, considering how much I used to complain about the blasted thing, but I still enjoy running my fingers over the smooth bone whenever I pass. We've made an awful lot of memories with that mask, although after so many years spent talking to the end of it, I'm much happier being able to see the face beneath.

I reach up to straighten the white linen at his throat, even though there's nothing wrong with it. He lowers his chin obligingly, watching me with those beautiful grey eyes as I take my time smoothing my hands over his dark coat. It fits him wonderfully across those lovely broad shoulders, and with his long hair tied back in a black ribbon, he looks so terribly handsome that I can't resist fussing over him a little longer.

“Are you quite finished?” he asks, his smile widening.

“Not remotely.”

He catches my hand and presses a kiss to my knuckles, just as a booming voice rises above the late-night bustle.

“Repent, good people! Repent, lest the Lord visit His wrath upon us once more!”

A clergyman stands on the steps of St Margaret's on New Fish Street, waving his Bible about by the light of a single lantern as he declares last year's pestilence a punishment for mankind's wickedness.

Gideon would have loved him.

I do often wonder what my brother would have made of the world today. Plenty to preach about, no doubt, although I expect he'd be rather disappointed to learn that mankind has carried on sinning quite happily without him.

Mind you, I'd thought his preaching days were over when we left York. He'd looked ready to drop dead upon the cobbles, and yet when I crept back into Beswick a few weeks later to fetch my hens, who'd been left to fend for themselves, whose voice should I hear bellowing prayers from the churchyard?

My bloody brother.

Against all expectation, the stubborn old sod recovered. I never did learn how he survived that dreadful infection, particularly after the state I'd left him in, but survive he did, and he went on to live another twenty-four years, as fiercely devoted to God as ever.

I kept my distance, but whenever our travels brought us near Lancashire, I'd occasionally return to Beswick to see how he was getting on. Over the years, his hair turned white and his shoulders grew stooped, until he could barely make his way up the church steps without help. Still, whenever I visited, there he'd be, waving his one good arm about and preaching to anybody who would listen.

Some things never change, I suppose, although there was one little difference.

One bitterly cold afternoon, I returned to find a young man kneeling outside the church, whipping himself across the back in the name of God. I'd fully expected Gideon to welcome him with open arms, just as he'd done with the Brethren of the Cross all those years ago. Instead, my brother came marching down the steps, caught the fellow's wrist before he could strike himself again and took the scourge from him. I couldn't hear what was said between them, but Gideon gave him a proper talking-to before removing his own cloak and wrapping it around the man's shoulders.

Well, that was certainly new.

I watched him lead the fellow inside, thinking of the brother who'd once believed there was something holy about a man tearing his own flesh apart. Perhaps he hadn't changed his mind about everything, but I liked to think I'd got through that thick skull of his, if only a little.

The last time I returned to Beswick, however, Gideon was nowhere to be seen. I waited as the church bells rang and the villagers gathered for their prayers, but another brother came to greet them at the door, and my brother never appeared.

The burning started the instant I crossed the church threshold, spreading beneath my skin as I made my way towards the little chamber beside the vestry where Gideon had slept for most of his life. By the time I reached his door, my hands were trembling, but a wet cough rattled from inside his, and I hadn't come all this way to turn back now.

He lay beneath his blankets, his hair reduced to a few wisps of white and his face so deeply lined that I hardly recognised him, though his eyes were much as I remembered. I drew a chair beside his bed and took his remaining hand, trying to ignore the heat searing through my bones as he stared at me, until at last his frail fingers closed gently around mine.

“Ophi,” he murmured.

“Hello, Gid.”