Page 44 of A Murder on London Bridge
He stepped back then, and the smallest, strangest thing happened. I did not want him to go. Vanity, nerves, common sense—name it what you like. But the corridors outside had teeth, and the city beyond them had found its flame. I wanted an anchor, and the anchor was a man who had the bad habit of showing up precisely where I needed him.
“Take care,” I said, for the more tender sentence would not pass my throat.
He understood anyway. His hand lifted, warm and steady, cupping my cheek for the briefest breath of time. “You as well.” And then he was gone.
Silence lingered. Catherine watched the door, then looked back at me. “You should marry him. He make fine husband.”
Heat touched my cheeks. “Your Majesty is gracious,” I said, bowing my head as duty required.
But inwardly I knew the truth. He would find a wife one day. That much was certain. But it would not be me.
Time divides in a crisis. It both runs and sticks. We packed jewels like prudent thieves. We sent for clearer water. We moved chairs that did not want to be moved and put papers into the right hands. And then we took them back out again because the right hands kept changing. Through it all, the bells beat on, sometimes many at once and sometimes a dreadful, single insistence like a finger tapping a tabletop.
I went to the window eager to see, God help me, the city’s destruction.
From here London had always looked like an argument that had never been resolved. Roofs arguing with roofs about how askyline should be. Spires jabbing their fingers into one another’s ribs. Alleys sulking. Tonight, the argument had been decided. Fire wrote its verdict in strokes of orange and black. It was no longer a bruise on the horizon. It was a crown—a jagged one, ugly as wrath.
Behind me, the Queen spoke in that plain, careful way of hers. “We go to river soon. Boats there. Carlos will send for us.”
“Yes, madam,” her woman said.
“Lady Halloran.” One of the women at my shoulder—the pearl-drop girl—touched my sleeve. “You not well?”
“I’m fine.” My voice came out steady, to my credit. “Only thinking.” I did not add that I was thinking of the embers leaping as cats do, from roof to roof, and a wind that had a malice of its own when it found a city built of kindling.
I looked back at Catherine. She stood where I had left her, not small but contained. I was struck again by that inconvenient affection I had developed for her—a thing entirely unsuited to our stations and therefore probably true. She caught my look and tilted her head the merest degree, which, in her language, meantwe go on.
“Yes,” I said. She had not spoken aloud, still I heard her.
The door opened again, and this time it was May, the Queen’s chamberlain, with his neat bow and his face turned sharper by worry. “Majesty. The King’s men ask for your movement to the river. Now.”
“Now,” Catherine repeated, and the word had no falter in it. “We go.”
We gathered what had been gathered. We put out two candles and left three burning because superstition is a comfort when nothing else is. We stepped into the corridor. The palace had changed while we stood still. It had become a throat filling with smoke, slowly but with purpose. I could feel the pull of it toward the doors.
As we went, I glanced once more through a high, arched casement. The crown of flame had slipped closer along the city’s brow. The wind dragged its edge like a knife. I stared a moment too long—drawn, horrified—and in that instant a single orange spark lifted on the draft, sailed high, and vanished into the dark.
A city holds its breath before it screams. London was there now—mouth open, chest tight—waiting to see if the fire would claim the ultimate crown—Whitehall itself.
CHAPTER 23
THE CITY AFLAME
May, the Queen’s chamberlain, moved ahead of us like a needle drawing thread, stitching a path toward the river. Behind him walked Her Majesty, steady despite the press and the peril, and I kept close at her side, watchful. Her women clustered around us—two staggering beneath the strong box, another pair burdened with the jewel coffer. Both at our backs and in front marched the King’s men, steel at their sides, driving the crowd apart with shoulders and command.
Catherine did not hurry. She permitted the world to make haste around her and went at the pace of decisions. Her English held firm in the crush—fewer words than anyone else’s and therefore stronger. “Keep close,” she said, and her ladies closed as if she had gathered them with her hands.
Smoke thickened by degrees, a lesson in incremental disaster. One breath tasted domestic—tallow and rushes. The next snapped like a match to resin. Above us, the bells hadcrossed the line between alarm and endurance. They were simply sound, steady peals.
At the river door, wind barged in, rude as a drunk relation. Torches guttered. Men shouted to one another from barges made suddenly precious. The Thames could be a savior when it chose, or a witness with its hands in its sleeves. Tonight it looked undecided.
The King’s men had done their part. Boats were nosing the bank, black hulls with white slivers of wake, their oars crossed like ribs. One of Charles’s gentlemen—sleeves rolled, face streaked with soot and sweat, less peacock than mortal—bowed and reached for Catherine’s arm. She gave it, not because she needed holding but because the ritual would steady him.
“Your Majesty,” he said, and when he looked at me, he was only a man grateful for an extra pair of eyes. “Lady Halloran.”
May counted heads under his breath, the reliable arithmetic of loyalty. “All,” he said. “Go.”
We swayed in a clutch at the water’s edge, the Queen’s women first, then the box, then Catherine herself, light-footed for a woman who had been taught to move only on polished floors. She set her slipper on the gunwale as if it were a question and then answered it with the other foot. The boat dipped and took her.
