Pandora(111)

He manages a smile. ‘Thank you, Lottie.’

Lottie hesitates. Edward looks at the housekeeper’s bruised face, her split lip, the red mark the gag has left. ‘Will you be all right?’

‘I’ll be fine, sir.’ She rubs a thumb under her nose. ‘I’ll find somewhere. I know places to go.’

Dora lifts her head. ‘No, Lottie, you can’t.’

Lottie looks away. ‘You needn’t concern yourself with me, missum.’

Dora looks at Edward. He squeezes her hand, understands what she does not ask.

‘You’ll come to Mr Ashmole’s, with us. At least for tonight,’ he adds before she can object, and Lottie breathes out, long and slow.

‘I’ll get my things, then. If you’re sure.’

‘Is it really safe to go in?’ Dora asks.

The men who brought Hezekiah out were the ones who had stopped the fire before it could get any further. Though it burnt the basement stairs black the fire did not destroy them, somehow did not make it past the basement doors.

‘It’s safe,’ Edward says.

Dora and Lottie stare at each other, then the housekeeper nods, ambles across the street, disappears into the shop, and Dora looks after her, a troubled expression creasing her forehead.

‘What is it?’ Edward asks.

She does not answer at first.

‘A miracle, don’t you think, that the fire did not take the shop.’

‘You know I don’t believe that.’

‘No,’ she says, and Dora rests her head against his shoulder again.

Just then a carriage clatters past, the cobbles making its wheels rattle loudly on their springs. Edward glances up. Stares.

‘Dora, did you see?’

But the carriage is already away, and Dora is yawning into her free hand.

‘See what, Edward?’

‘An old man. Through the window.’

Dora watches Edward stare after the carriage, touches his arm to bring him back.

‘Edward, what is it?’

He hesitates. ‘Do you ever remember knowing, or your parents knowing, an old man with a long white beard and blue eyes? Strikingly blue?’

Dora frowns. Something on her face tells him that this man sounds familiar to her, but then she sighs and shakes her head.

‘I have never known anyone like that. Not personally, at any rate. Perhaps my parents did, but …’ She looks at him carefully. ‘You told me, when we first met, that you had spoken with a gentleman who said he knew me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that man who you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought as much.’

He puts his arms around her, holds her close. They sit that way for some time. Edward breathes in the scent of smoke on her hair.

‘I want to know what he was trying to find,’ she says quietly against his chest.

‘Dora,’ he tries, but she is already pulling away from him, is standing, leading him by the hand across the street, into the shop.

‘I need to know, Edward.’

Inside she releases him. She turns away, walks with purpose down the shop floor and Edward follows her, past the upturned floorboards, up to the basement doors.

‘Be careful,’ he warns.

‘It’s safe,’ Dora replies, stepping onto the first step. ‘You said so yourself.’

Edward cannot argue with that but he keeps close behind her all the same, holds his hand out in case she takes a fall, but the stairs hold them, and at the bottom they look around.

The basement walls are completely blackened. The desk is ash and the Bramah safe – Edward shudders at the sight of it – is covered with patches of soot. But somehow the candles still burn in their sconces, and the pithos …

It is unmarked.

Just as Edward knew it would be.

Dora stares at it but she makes no comment, seems also to have accepted that the pithos has an uncanny ability to remain indestructible.

She turns away.

‘Here, Edward,’ she says, beckoning him to the ruined wall where a pickaxe lies charred against the rubble.

‘Hezekiah was trying to break through. Why?’

Edward eyes the wall warily. ‘Because, I suppose, there was something beyond it he wanted.’

Dora nods. ‘He said he overheard my parents speak of a fortune, but that they did not say where it was. What if they hid it right under his nose?’

Edward feels the thrill of it spindle up his spine. ‘A hidden room.’

‘A hidden room,’ she echoes. ‘But he couldn’t get in.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not, indeed. Come on, help me.’

‘Help you?’

But she is running her hands over the wall – the parts still intact at least – and suddenly he understands.

‘My mother would not have made this so difficult. Hezekiah tried to break through because he did not have the means to open it the proper way.’

Edward joins her at the wall. ‘So I’m looking for a lock?’

‘Hmm. A lock, yes, but a standard one would have been too obvious. No, it’s something else …’

Edward runs his fingers along the pitted wall – still warm – leaving trails in the soot. He stops. Then he begins to sweep his hand over it, tries to clear as much soot as he can and Dora watches him, her breath hitching in excitement.