I closed my eyes, exhausted now the danger had pa.s.sed and my blood had cooled. I drifted into a fitful sleep, still sitting in the chair . . . and woke in darkness. The fire had burned out. Voices drifted from the shop downstairs, s.n.a.t.c.hes of laughter. I pulled myself slowly to my feet. Kitty was singing a ballad loudly and somewhat off-key. A man begged her to spare his ears, and then they both laughed.

A shard of jealousy pierced my heart. It was John Eliot; I recognised his voice at once. Old, blissfully married, and round as a football. But still, he was alone with Kitty. I stole down the stairs, listening to their conversation. It was nothing idle talk about the play and the devilish annoying people in the seats around them. I stood by the door and tortured myself for a few moments, even so. How could she sound so cheerful, when we had argued so badly just hours before? Did she not know that I had almost died tonight? That she could have come home to discover she had lost me for ever? Well, no. She did not know that, Tom. In fact you refused to tell her where you were going, if you recall.

Feeling somewhat foolish, I nudged open the door and bade them both a good evening.

'Ah! Hawkins!' Eliot exclaimed, rising to his feet and smiling warmly. They were seated at the table with a bottle of wine between them, lit only by a solitary candle.

'So,' Kitty said in a flat voice without turning around. 'You are home.' As if she did not care tuppence.

I took Eliot's outstretched hand.

'Brought her back for you, Hawkins,' he said cheerfully, then lowered his voice. 'She was in half a mind to stay with us tonight . . . Good G.o.d!' He squinted at me. 'What's wrong with your face, man?'

'What's this?' Kitty sc.r.a.ped back her chair, then gasped in shock. 'Tom!' she cried, pushing Eliot aside and dragging me towards the candlelight. 'Is that blood?' She touched my cravat, saw the deep gouges beneath. 'Oh . . . You're hurt . . .'

'I'm fine,' I sighed, secretly delighted.

'Sam!' she called and a dark figure released itself from the shadows. I had not even seen him hiding there. 'Run across to Mrs Jenkins and fetch some ice. She took a load this morning.' She pushed him from the room and ran half up the stairs. 'Jenny!' she yelled, in a voice that must have woken every Jenny in a five-mile radius. 'Wake up! Mr Hawkins is hurt!'

A few minutes later I was settled on a low couch while Kitty washed the wounds at my throat with a scalding mix of brandy and hot water. I winced and gestured to the bowl. 'Could I not drink that instead? It looks . . . medicinal.'

'You're filthy,' she said, dabbing hard at one of the deeper cuts. 'Have you been rolling around in the mud?'

'Yes, as a matter of fact. I was attacked in St James's Park.'

Kitty's brows rose sharply. 'A highwayman?'

'I'm not sure what he was. A mad man, perhaps.'

She nodded and continued tending my wounds. After a little while, she said, 'I am a good, patient soul, am I not, Mr Eliot?'

Eliot had returned to the table, a gla.s.s of claret balanced on his fat belly. 'A saint,' he agreed.

'Because I do know how you hate to be nagged, Tom. And of course I am not your wife, so it is not my place to ask, "and what took you to the park so late?" or "who did you expect to meet there?" It would be most indelicate of me to suggest that perhaps you should have taken me to the d.a.m.ned play this evening instead, as you b.l.o.o.d.y well promised. Gah!' She scrubbed at a spot on my jaw. 'd.a.m.n it. This dirt won't come off.'

'I think it's a bruise,' I said, weakly.

'Oh. So it is.' She stopped scrubbing. Touched her lips to it.

'Kitty . . .'

'This was James Fleet's work, wasn't it?'

I gave a small, grunt, admitting nothing.

'It's no great puzzle,' Eliot called from the table. 'Kitty mentioned your visit this afternoon . . .'

' . . . and then all of a sudden you had a secret, unexpected meeting,' Kitty finished. She cupped a hand to my swollen jaw and held it there lightly. 'Tom. Tell me this. Is it finished with?'

'Yes,' I said, without hesitation.

'And you promise you won't work for that b.a.s.t.a.r.d again?'

'Never.'

She reached over and hugged me close, hiding her tenderness in a grip that half-crushed my ribs. 'Well then,' she said, when she was done injuring me. 'You are forgiven. Are you not the luckiest dog alive?'

Sam materialised, and dropped a packet of ice in my lap. I shrieked an oath.

'Mrs Jenkins wants sixpence.'

'Cow,' Kitty muttered.

'Did you enjoy the play, Sam?' I asked, once I'd recovered.

Sam shook his head, curls flying.

'Oh!' Eliot and Kitty protested together.

'It was made up,' Sam shrugged. 'Don't see the point of it.'

'What was the play?'

'The Beggar's Opera,' Kitty answered for him, when it became clear that Sam did not know and did not care. 'We've been talking about it for weeks, Tom.'

'Oh . . .!' I said, crestfallen. 'I was longing to see that.'

Kitty muttered something under her breath.

Eliot slapped his hands upon the table and pushed himself up from his chair. 'I'm sure it will run for weeks. Anything that rude about parliament is sure to be a success.'

'Was it not about a gang of thieves . . .? Ah.'

Eliot squeezed himself into his coat, flexing his arms with a look of surprise, as if it had shrunk since he took it off. 'I doubt Mr Gay will be welcome in court from now on. But I suppose that was the point. The play is his revenge upon them all.'

'Indeed?' Eliot made it his business to read every newspaper and broadsheet he could lay his hands upon, and always knew the gossip around the court. 'How so?'

He plucked his hat from its hook on the wall. 'Gay is a great friend of Henrietta Howard. He was sure she'd secure a nice plump position for him at court one day planned his future on it. Then old frog eyes was crowned king and it transpired that Mrs Howard had no influence over him whatsoever. It's the queen he listens to and no one else. Who would have guessed it? A man taking advice from his wife.' He winked at Kitty. 'Most unnatural.'

I smiled but stayed quiet, thinking of the terrified woman I had met so briefly tonight. I was not surprised she'd failed to help John Gay: she couldn't even save herself. Had she promised something similar to the man who had attacked her tonight? Some preferment that had failed to appear? Ach, and what did it matter? I would never see her again.

'Mackheath should have hanged,' Sam said.

'Hanged?' Eliot was outraged. 'He's the hero!'

'He's a highwayman,' Kitty corrected him, plucking his hat from his head and setting it upon hers at a jaunty angle.

'You can't kill the hero, not in a comedy,' Eliot persisted, reaching for his hat. Kitty swirled away from him, laughing. 'The audience would riot.'

Sam disagreed. 'Seen fifty or more Mackheaths turned off at Tyburn. The audience cheers.'

Later, Kitty and I lay in bed, drowsing under thick blankets as the fire dwindled to ash. I rested my head against her heart, listening to its soft beat as she ran her hand over my scalp, bristles rasping beneath her fingers.

'I must visit the barber,' I said.

She traced a finger down my bruised jaw. 'Leave it to grow a little. I like it when it turns soft. It feels like moleskin.'

I chuckled and reached for her hand.

'Tom,' she said, after a while. 'Could I have lost you tonight?'

I thought of the man's fingers tearing at my throat. The heavy thud of horses' hooves. The desperation and terror in Henrietta's eyes. 'Of course not.'

'I couldn't live without you,' she said, very quiet.

I laughed. 'You could live very well without me. Think of the money you'd save.'

She sighed and said nothing. The room was dark, and silent, but I could feel her disappointment in the air all around me, settling upon me like a dank mist.

There was a loud thud against the wall behind us. We both started in alarm.

Thud. Again, louder this time, something slamming hard on the other side of the wall.

'What is that?' Kitty whispered, crawling closer to the wall to listen.

I fumbled for my tinderbox, sparked a light. As I lit the candle, a woman cried out.

'Ahh! Ahh, G.o.d. Yes!'

Kitty clapped a hand to her mouth. Started to giggle.

The bed thumped again, and the woman yelped.

I stared at the wall in astonishment. Next door was Joseph Burden's house. People didn't f.u.c.k one another in Joseph Burden's house. We exchanged excited looks. 'Who is it, do you suppose?'

Kitty put an ear to the wall. 'Alice? Alice and Ned?'

'No. Their rooms will be up in the attic.'

She listened closer, frowning in concentration. 'It can't be Judith. I suppose it must be Alice.'

'With Stephen?'

There was a long, shuddering moan, then silence. Kitty pulled a face. 'Ugh. That wasn't Burden, was it?'

We threw up our hands in horror at the idea then sn.i.g.g.e.red like children. Joseph Burden, proud member of the Society for the Reformation of Manners, was f.u.c.king his housekeeper. Well, well.

'Oh! Your gift!' Kitty said, then reached under the bed and lifted out a handsome wooden box. She slid it towards me, a little nervous.

I put the box on my lap and rested the lid on its hinge. Inside lay a dozen packages, narrow and flat. I took one out and opened it up, conscious of Kitty watching for my reaction. Nestling in the envelope was a long, translucent sheath folded in two and tied loosely with a thin piece of ribbon. A condom.

'I ordered them from France, for the shop. They're made from sheep's intestines.'

How arousing. 'Yes. I've er . . . I've used them before.'

She slipped her hand in mine. 'So . . . we don't have to wait, any more.'

Her face gleamed in the candlelight. So young, so pretty. This was her gift to me, then. The last of her innocence. I brushed her hair from her face. She smiled, nervous, and looked deep in my eyes.

Tell her. Tell her why you've waited this long. Tell her that you want to marry her first and take care of her. That you want it to be different from all the other times. Tell her that you're afraid if you don't wait, she will never have cause to marry you.

Tell her that you love her, d.a.m.n it.

I opened my mouth . . . and the words died in my throat. 'I'm . . . I'm rather tired tonight, Kitty. After all that's happened . . .' And it was true, save for my lie of omission.

Her eyes softened with concern. 'Oh. Of course,' she agreed, embarra.s.sed, shutting up the box at once and slipping it beneath the bed. She touched her lips to my cheek. 'Of course.'

I blew out the candle and we lay in silence in the dark.

Part Two.

On now the procession carries them to the narrow stone bridge and the Fleet ditch. He smells it long before he sees it: a stinking slurry of s.h.i.t and offal. Not so much a river as a running sore, oozing its way down to the Thames. Thank G.o.d it is a cold, sharp day in March, not the dense heat of summer. The wind whisks the stench away down south towards Blackfriars. Hawkins closes his eyes, his body swaying as the cart turns on to Holborn Hill.

'Murderer!'

An old woman's voice pierces the air. His eyes snap open. She screams it again and he sees her, a stranger in the swirling crowds, her face twisted with hatred. Others take up the call, shouting curses down upon him.

'Monster!'

'Burn in h.e.l.l!'

How they hate him. Not just for the life they think he took, but for the life he squandered. A young gentleman, given every opportunity. Money, good health, an education all wasted.

A gang of apprentices leans out of a tavern window, waiting for the cart to pa.s.s below them. As it does, they throw a hail of stones at him, laughing at the sport. They are drunk and most of their shots sail wide, but one catches him hard. Blood spurts from his temple. He shields his head with his hands, half-stunned.

A lean, black-clad figure clambers on to the open end of the cart and crawls towards him. The Reverend James Guthrie, the Newgate Ordinary. He holds out a handkerchief. 'They would hate you less if you confessed.'

Hawkins presses the handkerchief to the wound and leans back, staring up into the cold, white sky.

'I'm innocent, Mr Guthrie.'

'Mr Hawkins . . .' Guthrie begins, then thinks better of it. He cannot help a man who will not help himself. He jumps down from the cart. 'G.o.d have mercy on your soul,' he says loudly, as he strides away. Playing to the crowd.