Andrew Taylor - The Fire Court

What was happiness? Rocking in Nurse’s lap as she sang. Sitting beside her brother Henry when, greatly condescending, he guided her as she stumbled through her hornbook. Or, better still, when he perched her up before him on the new brown mare, with the ground so far beneath that she had to close her eyes so she wouldn’t see it.

‘I’ll drop you, Jemima,’ her brother had said, his arms tightening around her. ‘Your skull will crack like an eggshell.’

Oh, the sweet, delicious terror of it.

Someone she could not see called her name.

No. No. Go to sleep, she ordered herself: down, down, down into the deep, dark depths where no one can see me. To the time before that fatal letter, before the Fire Court, before she had even known where Clifford’s Inn was.

Something was buzzing. It must be a wasp. She moaned with fear.

There was a sudden rattle of curtain rings, brutally unexpected, and she was bathed in brilliance. The bed curtains had been thrown open. It was as if someone had thrown a bucket of light over her. She squeezed her eyelids together but the light glowed pinkly outside them. A current of cool air swept over her, bringing the scents of the garden.

‘Close the curtains, you fool,’ she wanted to say, ‘shut out the light.’ But she couldn’t, wouldn’t speak.

She was lying on her back, she knew, on her own bed in her own bedchamber. If she opened her eyes she would see the canopy above her, blue and silver, silk embroidery; the bed was in its summer clothing; the winter curtains and canopy were made of much heavier material, and their embroidery was predominantly red and gold, the colours of fire. The curtains were hers, part of her dowry. Almost everything was hers. Everything except Dragon Yard.

She didn’t want to know all this. She wanted to be asleep in the dark, in a place too deep for dreaming, too deep for knowledge.

‘Master’s coming,’ said the voice. A woman’s. Her woman’s. Mary’s.

A wasp. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Why can’t it go away?

‘Any moment he’ll be here. I can’t put him off.’

Her brother Henry had had a waistcoat like a wasp: all yellow and black. Jemima wondered what had happened to it. Perhaps it had been lost in the fire. Or perhaps it was down, down in the deep, dark depths, where Henry was presumably lying himself. Anything the fishes had left. Philip had served with Henry in the Navy in the Dutch wars. That was how she had met her husband, as her brother’s friend.

The latch rattled again, shockingly loud. The buzzing stopped.

‘Isn’t she awake yet?’

Philip’s voice, achingly familiar, and horribly strange.

‘No, master.’

‘She should be awake by now. Surely?’

‘The draught lasts longer for some people than for others.’

Heavy footsteps drew closer to the bed, closer to her. She could smell Philip now. Sweat, a trace of the perfume he sometimes wore, the hint of last night’s wine.

‘Madam,’ he said. Then, more loudly: ‘Madam?’

The voice made something inside her answer to it. Her body’s response was involuntary, beyond control or desire. She knew she must continue to breathe, and that she must give no sign that she was not deeply asleep. Yet she wanted to cry out, to scream at him, to howl in agony and rage.

‘Hush, sir. It’s better to let her be.’

‘Hold your tongue, woman,’ he shouted. ‘She’s pale as a ghost. I’ll send for the doctor.’

The buzzing returned. To and fro, it went, nearer and further. She focused her attention on it. A distraction. She hoped it was not a wasp.

‘She’s always pale, sir,’ Mary said, almost in a whisper. ‘You know that.’

‘But she’s slept for hours.’

‘Sleep’s the best cure. There’s no physic can mend her faster. It’s always been the way with her. I went out this morning and fetched another draught from the apothecary in case she needs it tonight.’

‘You left her alone? Like this?’

‘No, no, master. Hester was watching over her. I wasn’t gone long, in any case.’

‘Devil take that fly,’ Philip muttered, his attention fastening on another irritation.

The buzzing stopped abruptly. There was the sound of a slap, followed by a muffled oath.

‘Hush, sir,’ Mary said. ‘You’ll wake her.’

‘Hold your tongue. Or I’ll put you out on the street with nothing but a shift to cover your nakedness. Has she said anything yet?’

‘No, sir. Not a word.’

‘Stand over there. By the door.’

The heavy footsteps drew nearer. She kept her eyelids tightly closed. She heard the sound of his breathing and knew he must be stooping above the bed, bringing his face close to hers.

‘Jemima.’ His voice was a whisper, and his breath touched her cheek. ‘Can you hear me?’ When she said nothing in reply, he went on, ‘Where were you yesterday afternoon? Where did you go?’

Philip paused. She heard his breathing, and a creaking floorboard, the one near the door, where Mary must be standing.

‘What made you so distressed?’ he said. ‘What did you see?’

After a few seconds, he let out his breath in a sigh of exasperation. He walked away from the bed. ‘Mary? Are you sure you know nothing?’

‘No, sir. I told you – she left me in the hackney.’

‘I’ll whip the truth out of you.’

‘That is the truth.’

The door latch rattled. ‘Send for me as soon as your mistress wakes. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, master.’

‘Don’t let anyone else talk to her until I have. Not Hester, not anyone. And not you, either. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The door closed. The footsteps clattered down the stairs.

She listened to Mary moving around the room and the buzzing of the fly. After a moment she opened her eyes. Daylight dazzled her. ‘I thought he would never go,’ she said.

Jemima spent Saturday and Sunday in bed. Mary tended to her needs. Mary was her maid. She had come with her from Syre Place. Her father was a tenant farmer on the estate, a man with too many daughters. Sir George had charged Mary to take special care of her mistress when she married Philip, and to obey her in all things, not Philip.

Mary sometimes slept with her when Philip did not come to her bed, especially in winter.

When Mary wasn’t in the room, she sent Hester in her place. Hester was a stupid little girl, fresh from the country. When she was obliged to speak to her mistress, she blushed a cruel and unforgiving red that spread over her face like a stain. She blushed when her master was in the room too, but he never spoke to her.

‘My lady?’ Mary said on Monday afternoon. ‘We need to change the sheets.’

She opened her eyes and saw Mary standing over her with an armful of bedlinen. She allowed herself to be helped out of bed and placed in an armchair by the window. It was a fresh, clear afternoon. Her bedchamber was at the back of the house. The trees at the bottom of the garden shielded the brick wall behind them and the fields stretching up to Piccadilly.

The window was open, and she heard hooves, hammering and sometimes distant voices. The trees blocked out most of the view, but occasionally she glimpsed a flash of colour through the leaves or wisps of smoke, rising higher into the empty sky until they dissipated themselves in the empty blue of heaven.

If one went to heaven after death, Jemima thought, how eternally tedious it would be if it were nothing but blue and infinitely empty. Better to be nothing at all oneself. Which was blasphemy.

Philip came up to see her while she was sitting there.

‘Madam,’ he said, bowing. ‘I’m rejoiced to see you out of your bed at last.’

He glanced at the maids, who had continued at their work but were making themselves as unobtrusive as possible, as servants should. ‘Mary says you remember nothing of your – your illness.’