Chapter 1

Chester, 3 January 1756 

Narrowed eyes watched her from across the street. High up in the confines of Eastgate Row, she gripped the oak railing and returned the stare.

Rain gusted into the walkway and numbed her lips. The eyes narrowed further, as if she were the first darkenings of a horizon, and her knuckles whitened on the rail.

Mary feigned distraction at the drunkards who laughed and slid on the mud below. Squawks of geese grated in her ears and the sulphurous stench of the gutters surged and ebbed with the wind.

Tightness gathered in her stomach. The man did not move. Slumped against a shop wall, he rested his stubbly head on the bricks, heedless of the people who skirted round his legs.

Hark at you – gawping at a scabby beggar! Mary took up her bag. A few more days in the city and she’d ignore him like the rest of them. She hurried on.

Cursing drivers, bellowing poultry hawkers, beer-fuelled brawlers – the city seemed made of gaping mouths. Stumps of teeth as rotten as taters, gums mashed by scurvy, noses crumpled by the pox. Mary squeezed round a horde of men outside a tavern, their armpits level with her nostrils. Beyond their oniony heat and the blast of ale fumes, the air chilled her face.

Then she stopped and looked back. The beggar’s gaze had followed her, as folk always said of portraits. She blew out a long sigh. Sometimes the tangle under her ribs writhed so hard she thought of cutting it out with a knife. A church clock tolled close by. Eleven. Damn. Late already for her new job. She had sat in the inn worrying about it for too long.

Down on the street, away from the shelter of the Row, muck splashed her stockings and seeped through to her legs. The beggar shoved back his sleeves and thrust his arms into the rain, wringing his face into a grimace. Scabs and weeping blisters pitted his skin.

She'd have to deal with worse than him. His stare made Mary’s neck itch. The uneven cobbles made her stumble and swear. The man showed his teeth in a yellow grin, then dragged himself up and strolled towards her. Mary clattered up the steps of the Northgate Street Row, her breath quickening. She had nothing to give him – he must be able to see that. Why did he not follow that gentleman with the gold-threaded hat, or grab watches from the waists of the vast petticoats that blocked the walkways? But then she felt for her pocket. The lump of coins was still there, from the pound he had given her.

This second storey of shops looked smarter. Too smart for her. She hesitated.

Do you think yourself better, Mary?

But she slipped into the nearest doorway and waited for the beggar to pass. He scratched his hands as he walked, his nails dislodging scabs.

‘May I help you, madam?’ The shopkeeper’s world-weary tone carried no welcome. His shop, distanced from daylight by the covered gallery of the Row, was brightened by lanterns.

‘Might I stand here a moment?’ Mary said. ‘There was someone . . .’

But she broke off. Bolts of cloth formed ranks along the counter. The shopkeeper glanced heavenwards.

‘Funny thing, eh, to find in a silk mercer’s? Silk?’

Mary scanned the neat rolls. Silks as vivid as sunlit seas, some red as the sand at home, some as pale as silver-birch bark. Silks printed with flowers, stripes – even birds. And, at the end, its edge frayed into a cobweb of threads, sat a bolt of silk of vibrant blue. Its weft crackled under her rough fingertips.

‘Where did this one come from?’ she asked.

The shopkeeper eyed the bedraggled hem of her topcoat. ‘From a merchant. Cost a fair penny. Too fair a penny to warrant letting folk finger it unless they mean to buy.’

Mary shifted aside to let the light fall better on it. A trace of green played through the weave, as algae might blossom in a pool. No. Pain and relief bunched in her chest. She drew her hand away.

‘I can’t afford anything,’ she said, smiling. ‘I just need to escape someone.’ The shopkeeper’s expression softened when Mary described the man.

‘Some blasted vagrant,’ he said, looking along the Row. ‘No shortage of them in this town.’

‘He in’t down on the street, is he?’

Scorn leapt back into the mercer’s eyes and he laughed. ‘Do you think I were washed up with the tide? You’d pike with all my ribbons before I could even shed a tear for your sorry plight.’

‘I’m no thief!’ Mary said. The mercer made a mocking bow and gestured at the door. ‘All I asked was to stop here a minute when I might else have been murdered.’

The shopkeeper snorted and a dash of spittle alighted on Mary’s neck.

Well, there was one enemy for her. Perhaps the city was not so different after all.