LITMIR.BIZ

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      She had been dreaming of Syre Place, where she had grown up. It was strange that she knew it to be Syre Place because it had seemed not to resemble the real house. The real Syre Place was built of brick, of a russet colour like a certain apple that her father was fond of. As a child, she had assumed that the house had somehow been built to match the apples, which was all part of the rightness of things, of the patterns that ran through everything.

      But the Syre Place in her dreams was all wrong. It was faced with stone, for a start, and designed after the modern fashion that Philip liked. (Philip? Philip? Her mind shied away from the thought of Philip.) It was a house in the modern fashion, a neat box, with everything tidy and clean both within and without, and a roof whose overhanging eaves made it look as if the building were wearing a hat.

      ‘My lady? My lady?’

      In Syre Place, the real one, there was a park where her father used to hunt before he lost his good humour and the use of his legs. Down the lane was the farm, whose smells and sounds were part of life, running through every hour of every day. In this Syre Place, however, the park was gone, and so was the farm. Instead there was a garden with gravel paths and parterres and shrubs, arranged symmetrically like the house. But – now she looked more closely at it – there was nothing neat about the garden in the dream because weeds had sprung up everywhere, and brambles criss-crossed the paths and arched overhead.

      Nettles stood in great clumps, their leaves twitching, desperate to sting her. Her brother had thrown her into a bed of nettles when she was scarcely out of leading strings, and she still remembered the agonizing, unfair pain of it. How strange and unnatural it was, she thought, that a plant should be so nasty, so hostile. God had made the plants and the animals to serve man, not to attack him.

      Nature was unnatural. It was full of monstrous tricks. Perhaps it was the work of the devil, not God.

      ‘Come now, madam. It’s past eleven o’clock.’

      Time? What time of year could it be? In the garden at Syre Place, the gravel paths were carpeted with spoiled fruit. Brown apples and pears, and yellow raspberries, and red strawberries and green plums, as if all fruitful seasons existed at once. They lay so thickly on the ground that she could no longer see the gravel. The smell of decay was everywhere. Jemima raised her skirts – good God, what was she wearing? just her shift? But she was outside and in broad daylight, where anyone might see her – but the pulpy fruit splashed stickily against the linen and spattered the skin of her bare legs.

      There were wasps, too, she saw, fat-bellied things cruising a few inches above the ground and feeding on the rottenness. What if one of them flew up inside her shift and stung her in her most private and intimate place?

      In her fear, she cried out.

      ‘Hush now,’ Mary murmured, the voice floating above her. ‘It’s all right. Time to wake up.’

      No, no, no, Jemima thought. Despite the wasps, despite everything, it was better to stay asleep, her eyes screwed shut against the daylight. She wanted to stay for ever in Syre Place where once, she thought, she had been happy.

      What was happiness? Rocking in Nurse’s lap as she sang. Sitting beside her brother Henry when, greatly condescending, he guided her as she stumbled through her hornbook. Or, better still, when he perched her up before him on the new brown mare, with the ground so far beneath that she had to close her eyes so she wouldn’t see it.

      ‘I’ll drop you, Jemima,’ her brother had said, his arms tightening around her. ‘Your skull will crack like an eggshell.’

      Oh, the sweet, delicious terror of it.

      Someone she could not see called her name.

      No. No. Go to sleep, she ordered herself: down, down, down into the deep, dark depths where no one can see me. To the time before that fatal letter, before the Fire Court, before she had even known where Clifford’s Inn was.

      Something was buzzing. It must be a wasp. She moaned with fear.

      There was a sudden rattle of curtain rings, brutally unexpected, and she was bathed in brilliance. The bed curtains had been thrown open. It was as if someone had thrown a bucket of light over her. She squeezed her eyelids together but the light glowed pinkly outside them. A current of cool air swept over her, bringing the scents of the garden.

      ‘Close the curtains, you fool,’ she wanted to say, ‘shut out the light.’ But she couldn’t, wouldn’t speak.

      She was lying on her back, she knew, on her own bed in her own bedchamber. If she opened her eyes she would see the canopy above her, blue and silver, silk embroidery; the bed was in its summer clothing; the winter curtains and canopy were made of much heavier material, and their embroidery was predominantly red and gold, the colours of fire. The curtains were hers, part of her dowry. Almost everything was hers. Everything except Dragon Yard.

      She didn’t want to know all this. She wanted to be asleep in the dark, in a place too deep for dreaming, too deep for knowledge.

      ‘Master’s coming,’ said the voice. A woman’s. Her woman’s. Mary’s.

      A wasp. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Why can’t it go away?

      ‘Any moment he’ll be here. I can’t put him off.’

      Her brother Henry had had a waistcoat like a wasp: all yellow and black. Jemima wondered what had happened to it. Perhaps it had been lost in the fire. Or perhaps it was down, down in the deep, dark depths, where Henry was presumably lying himself. Anything the fishes had left. Philip had served with Henry in the Navy in the Dutch wars. That was how she had met her husband, as her brother’s friend.

      The latch rattled again, shockingly loud. The buzzing stopped.

      ‘Isn’t she awake yet?’

      Philip’s voice, achingly familiar, and horribly strange.

      ‘No, master.’

      ‘She should be awake by now. Surely?’

      ‘The draught lasts longer for some people than for others.’

      Heavy footsteps drew closer to the bed, closer to her. She could smell Philip now. Sweat, a trace of the perfume he sometimes wore, the hint of last night’s wine.

      ‘Madam,’ he said. Then, more loudly: ‘Madam?’

      The voice made something inside her answer to it. Her body’s response was involuntary, beyond control or desire. She knew she must continue to breathe, and that she must give no sign that she was not deeply asleep. Yet she wanted to cry out, to scream at him, to howl in agony and rage.

      ‘Hush, sir. It’s better to let her be.’

      ‘Hold your tongue, woman,’ he shouted. ‘She’s pale as a ghost. I’ll send for the doctor.’

      The buzzing returned. To and fro, it went, nearer and further. She focused her attention on it. A distraction. She hoped it was not a wasp.

      ‘She’s always pale, sir,’ Mary said, almost in a whisper. ‘You know that.’

      ‘But she’s slept for hours.’

      ‘Sleep’s the best cure. There’s no physic can mend her faster. It’s always been the way with her. I went out this morning and fetched another draught from the apothecary in case she needs it tonight.’

      ‘You left her alone? Like this?’

      ‘No, no, master. Hester was watching over her. I wasn’t gone long, in any case.’

      ‘Devil take that fly,’ Philip muttered, his attention fastening on another irritation.

      The buzzing stopped abruptly. There was the sound of a slap, followed by a muffled oath.

      ‘Hush, sir,’ Mary said. ‘You’ll wake her.’

      ‘Hold your tongue. Or I’ll put you out on the street with nothing but a shift to cover your nakedness. Has she said anything

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