Pandora(59)
The day is bright and clear; the first sun in weeks. Dora lifts the window sash, breathes in cold, crisp city, turns then to the birdcage.
‘Hermes, I’ll be back late.’ She lifts the catch of the door, swinging it wide open. ‘Here,’ she says, reaching in her pocket for the currant bread she took from the kitchen before escaping to the attic. ‘Freshly baked today.’
Dora reaches into the cage but the bird – who has been chittering on his perch – suddenly nips her finger. She cries out, dropping the bread, then brings her finger to her mouth, sucks on it to quell the pain. After a moment she looks at it; Hermes has not broken the skin, but his beak has left a red mark and Dora rubs her thumb over it, frowning. He has not lashed out at her since the first year she took him in.
‘Whatever was that for?’
Hermes flops onto the cage floor, looks up at her, cocks his head. She watches him, then looks with distaste at the detritus he stands on. Magpies are collectors, this she has always known, has taken full advantage of. Dora lets him keep some of the beads he has brought home, the ribbons and lace he appeared to take a fancy to himself. She has hung mirrors on thread to dangle from the cage roof which Hermes prods with his beak, seemingly taking pleasure from their dancing lights. But these past two weeks he has collected all sorts of extra things on his excursions – white downy feathers, holly leaves, pine cones, newspaper scraps, all scattered now with his droppings. Sighing, Dora rubs her fingers free of crumbs. She has no time to dwell on it, thinks about Hezekiah downstairs in the basement, the way his face paled to chalk when Dora admitted to opening the pithos.
Why did he act so oddly? Why, when Dora confronted him with her suggestion of illicit trading did he barely bat an eye, but at the mention of the pithos itself …
Hezekiah’s fearful response – and yes, she thinks, it was fear – threw her completely. Dora shakes her head, slips on her gloves. She needs Edward. He will make sense of it.
‘Be good, Hermes.’
As she shuts the door behind her the magpie squawks harshly in reply.
Dora tries the bindery first. Mr Fingle is apologetic, informs her Edward has left early and is like, he says, with a knowing sort of look she does not understand, to be with Mr Ashmole. He gives Dora the address of both his employer’s and Edward’s lodgings, bows his head, shows her back out onto the narrow street and points her in the direction of Bedford Square.
She must assume this is where Mr Ashmole lives, for a bookbinder could not possibly live in an area so fine, and so Dora decides to try her luck there first. But these are streets she does not know; at first she follows the route through Covent Garden Edward took her that morning she had asked for his help, but when she finds herself lost she stops to get her bearings, recalculates the way. By the time she arrives at the foot of the white stucco steps of an imposing-looking house named Clevendale (having asked directions twice more, from a redcoat who looked her up and down like meat on a skewer and an orange seller with crescent moons of black wedged deep beneath her fingernails), her dress sticks to her back and her petticoats are two inches deep in London muck.
Dora smooths down her skirts, tucks a damp curl behind her ear, and with a deep breath she lifts the ornate lion-headed knocker. She shuffles on her toes, clenches and unclenches her hands. Presently the door is opened by a steel-haired woman with too little chin and too much nose.
‘Hawkers round back,’ she says tartly, but before the woman can close the door Dora steps forward.
‘I am so sorry to disturb you,’ she says, tongue tripping over her nerves. ‘Are you Mrs Ashmole?’
The woman’s thin eyebrows rise. ‘I am Mrs Howe, Mr Ashmole’s housekeeper. Is it the master you wish for?’
‘I’m looking for Mr Lawrence. I was told he might be here.’
Mrs Howe looks Dora up and down, and Dora knows how she must appear in her dated gown and shabby bonnet with its fraying ribbons. A maid. A beggar, perhaps. A nobody.
With a sniff the housekeeper shows Dora into a small sitting room, tells her to wait, indicates two damask chairs for her to sit on, but Dora feels too afraid to sit in either of them. She can see even from where she loiters near the door, without having to touch them, that they are silk. Expensive. New.
Dora looks around.
Though small it is a fine room, a pleasant antechamber for waiting visitors. A narrow bookshelf holds within it ornate volumes on philosophy, the natural world, Milton’s Paradise Lost, even a novel or two – Dora spies Richardson’s Pamela and wonders at the fancifulness of it.
But it is the rosewood cabinet that attracts. Within – lined from smallest to largest – are a set of antique globes, their spheres made from smoked glass to polished wood to shining marble. She thinks of Hezekiah’s globe, thinks how much he would covet these ones for they are far finer than his, and Dora’s fingers itch to spin them on their axes.
A large window overlooks the street which gives a grand view of a little park filled with trees that Dora imagines will sprout forth some beautiful foliage in the spring. She smiles wistfully. How lovely, she thinks. What a gift to be able to look at nature at leisure from one’s windows, from such sumptuous surroundings as this. She wonders then, absently, if Mr Ashmole is an idle sort and it strikes Dora as odd that Edward should know such a person, when he himself is so industrious.
The door opens. Mrs Howe again.