And now they were both gone.

‘Tea!’ Mama said to James as they climbed the last few weary steps to the front hall. ‘And biscuits. And please tell the maid to see to the fire in the drawing room.’

‘Begging your pardon, madam, the fire is banked already. Mr Knyvet is waiting in there.’

‘Mr Knyvet?’ Mama dropped her packages on the hall table and rushed to the mirror to pull off her hat and adjust her hair. Then she turned to Rosa. ‘Oh, you’re a disgrace, Rosa. Trying to tame your hair is like trying to comb an – an octopus. Or a hedgehog.’

‘Mama!’ Rosa shrugged away from her mother’s pinching fingers. ‘I’m sure Sebastian doesn’t care about my hair.’

‘Sebastian will no doubt expect his wife to be impeccably groomed, as he is himself,’ Mama said sharply, but she let go and Rosa entered the drawing room.

Sebastian had his back to the door, staring into the roaring fire. Rosa felt its warmth on her face and wondered again at the change in their fortunes wrought overnight by that one simple word: yes. Where a few weeks ago there would have been meagre sticks and a few chips of coal, now the fire leapt and danced in the wide grate, its heat reaching every corner of the long room.

Her fingers hurt, the heat of the fire thawing them too fast for comfort, and she felt suddenly small and mean and full of self-hate. Sebastian’s name had brought all this. The logs in the grate, the parcels in the hall, the joint they would eat tonight. And she could not love him for it.

‘Sebastian,’ she said softly, and he turned.

‘My darling.’ He came across the room and took her face in his hands, tilting it up so that he could kiss her mouth. Her lips were cold from the street and his mouth felt feverishly hot against hers. She felt his tongue against her teeth and pulled away, and his lips curved in a thin, lazy smile.

‘Still playing the nun, Rosa?’

‘We’re not yet married. Mama is outside the door.’

‘Your mama is so delighted with our engagement that she wouldn’t care if I took you here on this rug.’

Rosa felt her face flush scarlet. For a minute she couldn’t speak. It was not just the crudity, but the fact that it was so close to being true, that robbed her of the power to reply.

‘Oh, Rosa!’ He kissed her again, but paternally this time on the forehead. ‘Your name was perfect – clairvoyant. You flush like a newly opened rose. I adore to shock you just to see the blush on your cheek – but you really shouldn’t make it so easy. Sit down, my darling, you look exhausted. Have you been wedding shopping?’

‘Yes,’ she said mechanically. It was almost true, Mama and Clemency had been wedding shopping, after all. Then she remembered her manners. ‘Sebastian, I was so sorry to hear about your father. What happened?’

‘An accident.’ Sebastian spoke shortly. ‘He had been working on an experiment, a sort of . . . transfusion.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Nor do I, completely. But it seems that there is a new machine that can extract –’ he glanced at the doorway, checking that they were alone, and lowered his voice ‘– it can extract the magic from one person and inject it into another, giving them strength and power beyond their own abilities. They had refined the process using prisoners, condemned men, you understand. Their success was mixed but at last they came to believe they understood the matching process. It seems that they were wrong.’

‘But was he mad?’ Rosa sank on to on the sofa. ‘What was he thinking, a Chair of the Ealdwitan to risk his life in an unproven experiment?’

‘Perhaps he was mad, yes.’ Sebastian’s face was hard. ‘The quest for power is a kind of madness of its own. My father was unsparing of others, but also of himself. He was not the only person to die in pursuit of this.’

‘But why do it at all?’

‘There are others, overseas, who are developing the same techniques. We cannot risk leaving this power in their hands alone.’

‘God in Heaven.’ Rosa put her face in her hands. When Clemency had shaken her head and refused to discuss Philip’s work at the Ealdwitan she had thought it was because it must be boring, political. Not this. Not this mad quest for power and domination.

‘So . . . what now?’ she managed. ‘Will you be Chair?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid our wedding must be postponed until that is ratified. It means yet more delays, on top of my father’s funeral. Do you mind?’

Mind? She almost laughed.

‘No, I don’t mind. I mean – I understand. This is more important.’

He took her hands and began pulling off her gloves and kissing her fingers one by one. At last he kissed the great stone that burnt on her left hand.

‘I mind,’ he said huskily, his soft, rough voice sending a shiver down her spine. ‘I cannot wait until you are mine, in name and body, in every way imaginable.’

She did not answer, but only stared into the fire. There was a sound at the door and Mama entered. She laughed at the sight of Rosa’s hand in Sebastian’s, and Rosa snatched it away.

‘Forgive me for disturbing you, my dear lovebirds, but I came to ask if you would stay for tea, or perhaps even dinner, Mr Knyvet? Please do not stand on ceremony here; we are all family now, or almost.’

‘Alas, I cannot.’ Sebastian stood and bowed. ‘I have to go to Spitalfields, to try to sort matters out at the factory and the soup kitchen. You cannot imagine the mountain of administration my father’s death has caused.’

Spitalfields. The word gave Rosa a pang, like a sudden stitch in her side. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying not to let Sebastian see.

‘Then let me ask James to bring your hat and coat,’ Mama was saying. She rang the bell and James appeared. As Mama gave the order, Rosa turned to Sebastian. She spoke quickly, before she could think better of it.

‘Sebastian, won’t you take me with you?’

‘Where, darling?’

‘To the East End.’ She could not bring herself to say ‘to Spitalfields’. It was too close to saying ‘to Luke’. She would never see him, she knew it. The East End was teeming, sprawling, filled with London-born and immigrants, sailors and natives, merchants, manufacturers and itinerant labourers. There was no hope of finding one face among the throng – and he would not recognize her if they did meet. But at least it would be something – something more worthy than endlessly shopping with Clemency and Mama – that could be of real value to others. She thought of Luke’s friend, the skinny girl with hungry eyes too large for her face that she had sent to the Knyvets’ soup kitchens. ‘Listen, if I’m to become part of your family, I want to understand your businesses, your family’s philanthropy. Please – take me to the factories, to the soup kitchens. Perhaps I can help in some way.’

‘It is no place for a lady!’ Mama exclaimed.

‘That’s not true! Think of Lady Burdett-Coutts, Mama! Think of all she has done for the poor.’

‘Her interests are fallen women,’ Mama said tartly. ‘Hardly suitable for an unmarried girl of sixteen, Rosa!’

‘Please . . .’ Rosa turned to Sebastian, knowing it didn’t matter what Mama thought – if Sebastian agreed, Mama would acquiesce. ‘Please take me. I’m not cut out for a life of idleness and shopping. I want to do something, something to occupy myself. I know I can’t do much now, as an unmarried girl, but if I understand your family’s concerns then perhaps, after we are married . . . ?’

Sebastian took his coat and hat from James and put them on. He looked as if he were thinking. At last he spoke.

‘Very well. Not today. But if your mother agrees, I will take you.’

‘Tomorrow then?’

‘You are persistent, Rosa,’ he laughed.

‘Tomorrow? Mama, do you agree?’

Her mother shrugged.

‘If you are under Sebastian’s protection, I can hardly object, I suppose.’

‘Very well.’ Sebastian nodded. ‘Tomorrow. But I warn you, Rosa, you may be shocked at what you see.’

‘Tomorrow,’ she nodded as they walked out to the hall. ‘I will not be shocked, I promise. Thank you, Sebastian.’

He turned to leave, but then stopped.

‘Oh, my cane. James, did I give you my cane?’

‘I beg your pardon, sir.’ James hurried forward with a black ebony cane with a carved silver head. ‘I quite forgot.’

‘Thank you.’ Sebastian took it in his gloved hand. ‘I would not lose it for the world. It was my father’s.’

‘It is beautiful workmanship,’ Mama said. ‘What does the head show? I cannot see.’

‘It is a coiled snake.’ Sebastian lifted his hand, showing them the silver. ‘An ouroboros in figure eight form. It symbolizes the circle of life, the beginning and end, destruction and renewal.’

Rosa shivered. There was something disquieting about the snake’s calm, methodical self-cannibalization. It had achieved the ultimate goal: immortality – and paid the ultimate price.

Sebastian noticed the shudder and kissed her cheek.

‘You are cold. Don’t wait to see me out; go back to the drawing room and the fire.’

‘Very well. But you won’t forget, will you? About tomorrow?’

‘I will send my carriage for you at ten. Is that too early? But the nights draw in so quickly now, and the East End is no place for a woman when it gets dark.’

‘Ten is perfect.’

She stood, watching as he disappeared into the fog, the silver head of his cane glinting in the gas-light.

‘Goodnight, Rosa . . .’ His voice floated back through the thick yellow murk. ‘Until tomorrow.’

Until tomorrow. She closed the door against the chill and the moist darkness and went back inside.

21

‘Beautiful day, miss,’ the groom called down to Rosa from his seat. ‘Nothing like a breeze to blow away the fog, eh?’ She nodded, forgetting that he could not hear her, but she was too absorbed in looking out of the carriage windows. At first the streets had been familiar – Belgravia Square, Hyde Park Corner, Piccadilly. But as they made their way past Regent Street into the narrow maze of streets around Leicester Square and Covent Garden, she began to realize what a different London this was from the one she knew. Gone were the tall, grand vistas with their long, clean lines. In their place were crooked tumbledown houses backing on to cobbled alleys, little sooty squares where grubby children played, turning their faces in wonder as they saw the carriage pass.

‘Best lock your door, miss,’ the driver called down, and Rosa slid the bolt across, though she found it hard to believe anyone would attack them in full daylight. And in any case, these people looked poor but that did not make them thieves. She knew, now, that the poor could be more honourable than the rich.

As they drew near the East End, even the air changed. She caught glimpses of the Thames between buildings, running thick and yellow, foam and filth on its surface. The streets grew so narrow that only one carriage could pass and they stopped frequently, waiting for beggars and children to get out of the road, or for carts and draymen to move out of the way. There was a smell of decay – sweet and sharp with filth at the same time. Above the stink of the river and of a thousand night-soil buckets she could smell coal smoke and a rich, heavy odour like rotten beer.

‘What’s that smell?’ she called up to the groom.

‘Which one, miss?’ he called back with a laugh. His voice was muffled and she saw that he had drawn his scarf across his face. ‘But I think you mean the brewery, if you’re not talking about the stink of Old Father Thames here. Strong, ain’t it? But not unpleasant, like, and it helps to drown out the rest. Nearly there now.’

They passed a ragged queue of people – men, women and children – strung along the wall of one narrow street in a line that snaked away down a side alley so that she could not see the end of it. There were perhaps a hundred of them, all hollow-cheeked, even the quiet, listless babies. Many of them had scarfs and rags wound around their faces, but she was not surprised; it was very cold and a cruel wind came off the river.

At last the carriage turned a corner and drew to a halt outside a tall, forbidding building made of grey stone, with windows high in its walls. At street level there was only a huge double door and the groom leant down and banged on it smartly with a stick.

‘Open up! Miss Rosa Greenwood, for Mr Knyvet.’

A small window opened in the top half of the door and a face peered out, then Rosa heard bolts being withdrawn and the door swung wide. The coach and horse rattled through and she peered out to see they were in a grey courtyard lined with windows and opening on to the river, where a boat was unloading huge pallets on to a wharf. There was almost silence from the buildings, no sound of voices or laughter, apart from the great rattling of some kind of machinery. Above their heads a tall chimney rose against the sky, adding a plume of smoke to the rest of the pollution.