Pandora(14)

‘Now look here,’ Hezekiah hisses. ‘I’ll not have you ruin this for me.’

‘It won’t be us that ruins anything. It’ll be this thing.’ Matthew nods behind him. ‘It ain’t right. It ain’t.’

‘Again, nonsense I say.’

‘Sir, what this thing has done … Poor Charlie’s not said a word for days—’

‘Enough, Coombe, else you and your brothers will get nothing.’

‘No, Mr Blake,’ Matthew counters, his tone unbending now. ‘We want more money. The effort it took to retrieve, the journey we’ve had bringing it here. The danger you put me in to begin with. I reckon that’s worth twice what we agreed.’

‘You’ll get no such thing,’ Hezekiah sniffs, but he can tell he is losing his hold on the matter. ‘The price I stipulated is more than adequate.’

‘Then we’ll load it back up, take it out to sea and throw it overboard where the damn thing belongs.’

But as Matthew begins to turn away Hezekiah presses down harder on his arm.

‘No! Please, I …’

Hezekiah’s mouth goes dry, his eyes dart. He cannot lose it now, he cannot. The Coombe brothers stare with sunken eyes. Hezekiah grimaces, releases his hold.

‘I shall pay you the agreed fee now, the rest when my own business is complete. I can’t pay you any sooner than that.’

A muscle tics in Matthew’s jaw. The three brothers share a look, a nod.

‘Very well,’ Matthew says. He chucks his chin at his siblings; they haul themselves up onto the cart. ‘But if we don’t have payment by month’s end you can expect us pounding at your door.’

Hezekiah bristles. ‘You think my word not enough? Have I ever let you down?’

‘No,’ Matthew concedes, taking the reins of the horse. ‘But you’ve never had nothing the likes of this before.’





CHAPTER SEVEN





Again, she must bide her time. For a little while longer she must suffer under Hezekiah’s roof. But Dora is a stubborn creature, and her imagination is already at work.

So, then. Her offerings are not in vogue. No matter, Dora thinks, as she passes the path leading up to St Paul’s. In a few years they will be again, and she will ensure her pieces are in commission by the time they are. Still, she is no fool. Dora knows the goldsmith means only to delay her. She knows he will likely dismiss her again. But what better person than she to design such jewellery? Her mother was Greek. Dora spent her childhood immersed in Grecian dig sites. It is in her blood.

Agáli-agáli gínetai i agourída méli.

‘Slowly, slowly, the sour grape becomes honey,’ she mutters under her breath.

It takes time to grow bigger or better.

Every morning after breakfast and before her parents went to dig, Dora was taught her Greek letters, her proverbs, the ancient stories of her mother’s homeland. Be patient, the proverb meant. But has she not been patient long enough?

When Dora emerges back onto the stir of Ludgate Street, she crosses to the far right where the pavement is at its widest to avoid the tracks of oncoming carriages, the push-pull of London’s suffocating crowds. A frost the night before has deposited thin sheets of black ice on the roads; walking here requires a certain tactility, a skill in placing a foot just so, bending the body to weave between the press of others, and a slippery walkway makes it a treacherous exercise. She is halfway between a stationer’s and tailor’s when behind her St Paul’s strikes its bells eleven and ahead of her there is the most almighty crash. A horse’s scream pierces the air.

Dora manages to push her way through the building crowd, intending to keep her head down, for accidents like this happen often and most are horrific things – not worth the nightmares you get from looking – but then she hears the unmistakable shriek of Lottie Norris. Dora’s head snaps up in time to see the housekeeper rushing from the shop in a flurry of skirts. Dora picks up her own and risks a run.

In front of the shop a cart has upended. The horse, though on its side, appears unharmed. Underneath its flank, though … Hezekiah’s leg is trapped and he is making a great show of howling his distress. Standing near him in an ungainly semicircle are three men Dora does not recognise. One of them is wringing a threadbare cap in his hands.

‘You see!’ he is crying, ‘You see? It sends things mad!’

Dora stares at them. Large, muscular men, each sharing the same copper hair, the same pale, red-veined eyes and all sickly, she thinks, assessing their grey faces. As she draws closer she smells on them the briny stench of the sea.

‘The damn beast slipped on the ice, nothing more!’ Hezekiah is now near spitting. ‘It has ruined my prize. Shoot it, someone! The infernal creature will pay for this, mark my words.’

‘Now, now,’ croons Lottie by his side, her hand clenched in his. ‘Perhaps there’s no harm done …’

‘Of course there is,’ Hezekiah snaps, trying in vain to extricate his leg from beneath the horse. ‘How can there not be? Matthew, tell me how it fares.’

Dora’s curiosity piqued, she joins the largest of the men at the back of the wagon. A wheel spins on its axel, the cart itself is in splinters, but its cargo … On the cobbles, encased in thick rope, is an extremely large wooden crate. The wood is warped at the corners, its boards patched verdigris. Molluscs stick firmly to its sides. A crude sideways cross has been painted on one of the panels. Slowly, the man circles the crate. At one corner, Dora sees, a section of wood has fallen away leaving a dark jagged gap and the man steps forward, presses his face up close to it. There is a pause, the impatient chatter of onlookers.