The Ladder Dancer (29 page)

I crawled to my knees. My jaw had taken the full force of Ridley’s blow and was aching. My hair was streaming with rain; the damned stuff had soaked through my coat and was sticking my shirt to my shoulders. My hat lay sodden and misshapen a yard or so away; I dipped for it, grunted as the world threatened to spin around me.

A voice was calling, ‘Master! Master!’ The boy came running up, looking anxious. ‘Are you all right, master?’

‘I am,’ I said. ‘But Cuthbert Ridley won’t be when I get hold of him.’

He looked awed. ‘Was that Mr Ridley? But he says he never drinks.’

That was not what Parker in the Turk’s Head believed. ‘Ruled paper,’ I said thoughtfully.

‘Yes, master.’ And he dashed off again.

Ridley and Heron had disappeared, running down into the Clothmarket and out of my sight in the driving slant of rain. I followed more sedately, cramming my sodden hat back on my head, trying to avoid the worst of the puddles and wondering what best to do. The crucial thing was to find Heron again; he couldn’t return to our own world without me. In that sense, Ridley was not so important as he could find his own way back.

But then, I thought, why hadn’t he already done so? He was foolish to begin with, and wild, and now he was drunk besides; no scruples would prevent him stepping between worlds, even if there were people about. It was clearly the easiest way to escape myself and Heron. He must want to stay in this world very badly. Why had he come here?

To go to a field, apparently. A field, I thought, would be a good place to hide something, in a hedge, under a few stones or even in a hole dug for the purpose. Like a weapon you’d just stabbed a man with, for instance. Or that someone else had stabbed a man with. The attacker had tried to get rid of Ridley tonight and Ridley’s first impulse had been to recover the weapon used on Nightingale to bring even more pressure to bear.

I splashed on down into the Clothmarket. Past a draper’s shop. Quickening my pace, I came out opposite St Nicholas’s church. The veil of rain obscured the gilded points of the crown on top of the church. Which way would Ridley have taken from here? I looked about in some despair, then saw someone I recognized – Philips, the new constable of All Hallows’ parish, wrapped in a voluminous greatcoat and looking miserable as he tramped through the torrents. I hesitated to speak to yet another person who knew me but surely a mere civil enquiry could not hurt. ‘Mr Philips!’

He stopped and bowed, even reached for his hat but clearly thought twice of taking it off and getting his wig wet.

‘I’m looking for Mr Cuthbert Ridley. I was told he came this way.’

‘He went down the Side to the Key, sir,’ Philips said. ‘Saw him not a moment ago. Looked like he was in a hurry.’

‘Thank you,’ I said and he walked off. I went on my own way, reflecting on the encounter. Philips had just spoken to a man from another world and would never know it.

The stones of the steep Side were treacherously slick; I tottered down, concentrating on my footing, only belatedly realising there was a man standing at the foot of the street, staring into the window of the breeches maker as if the rain was not sluicing down. He turned his head. Ridley. But I knew at once it was not
our
Ridley, for he was wearing a greatcoat and hat against the weather; the clothes were sober to the point of dullness and his wig unfashionable, even staid.

He had a sour look which deepened into disapproval as he saw me. I nodded and made to pass. The rain slashed against my back and threatened to make off with my hat. I put up a hand to secure it. My face ran with raindrops. Ridley stepped in front of me. ‘Mr Patterson,’ he said in a peremptory fashion, ‘I want a word with you. You have been traducing me, sir!’

I sighed. ‘No, I haven’t.’

‘You have been telling the world I am a drunkard and a lecher. You have been prejudicing the ladies against me! Particularly Mrs Jenison. I have a stake there, sir, one of those daughters is mine!’

Revulsion rose up in me. ‘Money, I daresay,’ I said.

‘Damn it, I will have the girl!’

His face was purple; I said carefully, ‘I assure you that I never speak of you at all.’

I tipped my sodden hat, and walked away. He even shouted after me, but I let the wind and the rain take his words and hurried on down to the Key.

Heron was standing by the slope that led up on to the Tyne Bridge, apparently oblivious to the rain lashing down. He was scanning the few scurrying passers-by without a great deal of hope. ‘Damn him to hell, he’s disappeared!’

I was wet and wretched, and didn’t want to encounter anyone else I knew, or ought to know. ‘Let’s go back. Ridley will follow in his own time.’

Heron had his hand on his sword hilt. ‘And if he doesn’t?’

I sighed. ‘We’ll be well rid of him.’

He stared at me. ‘We cannot leave him here! God knows what damage he could do.’

‘We can’t comb the entire town for him!’ I pointed out. ‘We could miss him half a dozen times. Much better to get back home. Besides, he can’t stay here for ever, not if he hopes to get money out of his attacker.’

‘Then why the devil did he come here in the first place?’

‘To get the evidence he needed to damn the real villain of this crime.’ I glanced round as a merchant, hurrying past, greeted us both. He was plainly in no mood to linger, but the encounter decided Heron. He nodded. ‘I know where we can go back without being seen.’

I followed him into the Guildhall. At the front of the building, wide stone steps wind up from the Sandhill to a covered balcony from which one can survey the wide expanse below. But Heron led me past the first flight of stairs and behind, to a cramped dark passage with two doors leading from it. It was deserted.

‘This will do,’ I agreed. Heron put his hand on my arm and I started to take that one step forward that would take us back to our own world—

A heavy weight descended on my shoulders, and bore me down, down . . .

Thirty-Nine

A truly civilized society is one in which every man and woman knows their place.

[
A Gentleman’s Companion
, October 1735]

I hit hard flagstones with a force that took the breath out of me. Heron was shouting somewhere close by. For a moment the crushing weight lay heavy on my back; I heard a grunting breath in my ear, and something else, almost like a sob.

Then the weight lifted; I heard Heron say, ‘Move one inch and I’ll put this sword straight through your windpipe. And don’t think I won’t do it.’

I managed to roll on to my back, wheezing for breath. Behind me, in the faint light of dawn, Ridley stood cringing, the point of Heron’s sword at his throat.

I tried to speak but I didn’t have breath enough. Heron said, ‘We are back. All three of us. Ridley played piggyback to get here.’

I squinted at them, managed to drag myself to my feet with the help of the stairs. ‘But that means—’

‘Exactly,’ Heron said. ‘He cannot come and go on his own.’

‘But he did!’

‘Actually,’ said another voice, sounding amused, ‘he did not.’ And Esther, still in greatcoat and breeches, appeared on the other side of the steps.

With her hand on Kate’s shoulder.

Hugh’s lodgings were unquestionably the best place to go, being nearest, but he was not best pleased to be woken at dawn yet again.

‘What the devil are you doing here!’ he demanded, staring at my sodden clothes. ‘Been taking a dip with your clothes on, have you?’

‘It is Sunday, isn’t it?’ I asked, supporting myself wearily on the door jamb. ‘Sunday morning?’

Hugh was bewildered. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s good.’ I heaved myself off the doorjamb wearily. ‘I’m supposed to be playing the organ at All Hallows today.’

We trooped in. Hugh stared at Kate and Esther, frowned at Heron’s dishevelled and wet state, then opened his eyes wide when he saw Heron’s sword at Ridley’s back.

‘We didn’t want to have to drag Ridley through the streets at swordpoint any further than we had to,’ I explained.

‘I can see that might cause comment.’

‘He deserves it!’ Kate said mutinously. ‘Spit him! Run him through!’

Heron pushed Ridley down on to the one hard chair Hugh possessed. He put down the sword, but didn’t sheath it, standing guard. Ridley glanced around the room, quick eyes darting here and there as if he was contemplating an escape plan.

‘Besides,’ I said, ‘this is an unspirited house. No one can overhear us.’

Hugh sighed. ‘Except the widow below. You didn’t wake her up again, did you?’

Fortunately, Hugh had gone to bed wearing shirt and breeches, still presumably finding it too much of a struggle to get out of his clothes one-armed when he was tired; he was decent enough for female company therefore. Esther and Kate sat on the edge of the bed; Hugh stood by the door and I leant against the wall near Ridley, ready to react if he tried any tricks. My shoulders were stiffening from carrying his weight and I felt bruised all over. I was dripping water on Hugh’s floor and my wet clothes were beginning to feel clammy and my skin chill.

It was not a pleasant atmosphere. With six of us in the tiny attic room it was decidedly stuffy and the smell of wet cloth began to be overpowering. Ridley, with a grin, wrung out the skirts of his coat on to the floor. Hugh glared.

‘He used Kate,’ Esther said. ‘Made her take him into the other world.’ She turned a sympathetic gaze on the girl.

Kate was still wearing the white dress but it was grubbier than it had been. She looked slightly damp but had patently escaped the worst of the rain in the other world. She kicked at the edge of the bed. ‘I ran off, didn’t I?’ she said sullenly. ‘Soon as we got there. Thought he’d be stuck there for ever!’ She glared indignantly at me. ‘And you had to bring him back!’

‘It wasn’t entirely voluntary,’ I said. ‘Start from the beginning and tell me everything. How did he know you could step through into the other world?’

She squirmed, started kicking the bed again. Hugh seized an old cloth and rubbed it along the wet floor with his foot.

‘Go on,’ Ridley sneered. ‘You tell ’em. Tell ’em how I found you standing over the body.’

‘I never!’

‘Blood all over her,’ Ridley said gleefully. ‘And the knife in her hand.’

‘You— you—’ Words failed Kate; she stared at us wildly. ‘I didn’t do it! Honest, I never touched Mr Nightingale!’

‘Kate was wearing the yellow dress,’ I said, starting to shiver. ‘I saw her later and there was no blood on the dress. And I doubt very much Nightingale was stabbed with a
knife
.’

‘It was scissors,’ Kate said, sticking her tongue out at Ridley. ‘A big pair.’

‘Kitchen scissors?’ Esther suggested.

‘Which would explain the tearing around the wounds,’ I said. ‘Kitchen scissors would be sharp but not as sharp as a knife. So what did happen?’

Ridley was grinning but he let Kate have her say. ‘I went down the Stair like I said – when I thought Mr Nightingale might have gone off the wrong way. And I found him with the scissors still in him!’ She wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘It was horrible! Then I heard someone coming and hid in a doorway. It was all blocked up or I would have tried to go in.’

I remembered that doorway.

‘And then
he
came along.’ She nodded at Ridley. ‘And starts laughing when he sees Mr N lying there.’

‘Charming fellow,’ Hugh said, looking for somewhere to wring out the cloth.

‘And then he saw me.’

‘That yellow dress,’ Ridley said cheerfully. ‘Pretty obvious, even in the dark.’

‘I was scared,’ Kate said. ‘So I tried to run.’

‘Into the other world?’

She nodded. ‘And he grabbed me!’ she said indignantly. ‘So he came too!’

‘And you ended up in that field.’

‘And he had the scissors with him – I thought he was going to kill me!’

‘I should have,’ Ridley said, with a grin that was half snarl.

‘He buried them. In a hole under the hedge.’

I looked at Ridley. He gave every appearance of enjoying himself, although I noticed he was leaning away from Heron’s intimidating silent presence. The sword point was on the floor, but Heron was patently not relaxing his watch. Odd how being sodden merely made him look even more dangerous; I just felt ruffianly.

‘You buried the scissors so you could use them to blackmail the person who’d attacked Nightingale,’ I said. And then, I thought, he’d bought another pair afterwards; his attack on me with them had been opportunism – I suspected his real intent had been to flaunt them at Nightingale’s attacker, to make it clear he knew how the attack had been carried out. But he must have had second thoughts and decided only the real article would be persuasive.

‘He wanted to get them back again,’ Kate said. ‘That’s why he wanted me to take him there tonight. Wrote me a note to say so.’

‘Thought you couldn’t read,’ Hugh said. He pushed the cloth under the bed with his foot, leaving it next to the chamber pot.

‘It wasn’t a real note,’ Kate said scornfully and fished a piece of paper out of the recesses of her dress. ‘Here.’

Esther took the damp note, unfolded it and held it out for me to see. It was a sketch of a pair of scissors, drawn with a spluttering pen in thin greyish ink. The sort of inferior writing equipment usually found in inns. I remembered Ridley calling for pen and paper in the Old Man just as we were leaving; typical of him to flaunt his audacity in front of us, daring us to understand what he was doing.

‘That’s what he said he’d send if he wanted me to take him back for the scissors,’ Kate said. ‘If I got a note like that, I had to meet him in that alley off the Clothmarket.’ She added again, ‘What did you want to bring him back for?’

‘I want to know the name of Nightingale’s attacker.’ I looked down at Ridley. He was brushing at the muddy knee of his breeches, apparently concerned about nothing else at all. ‘The evening Nightingale was attacked, you’d been following him around, hoping to provoke him.’