The Journal of Dora Damage(44)

‘Come now, little one,’ I hissed.

‘But Mama,’ she wailed.

‘Hush your moaning, child. We must be off. Hurry, or I shall tell your father.’

The garnets would be perfect for my design. I had become a thief.

I showed the earring to Peter, who did not ask me how I had come by it, but straightways set himself to troubling how to provide a firm setting for the garnets. I bit my lip as he held the piece on the palm of one hand, and prodded it with a bloated finger-pad of the other hand. It was going to be a painstaking piece of work for him, and I meant that literally.

That afternoon, after Mr Skinner had come and gone with one half-sovereign and eight shillings and very little trouble else, Peter found solace for his resultant nerves in the laudanum bottle again. I put Lucinda to an early bed, wiped the brown spittle off Peter’s chin, and stayed up until midnight disbanding and cleaning off the backs of the sections of the old binding of the Decameron, and mending the holes in the folds with pared paper. It was an arduous and fragile process, but I trusted that the mends, which seemed invisible by candlelight, would be likewise barely perceptible in the light of day. My eyes were heavy by the time I rigged up the sewing-frame, but it was a simple enough layout – octavo, with blank first recto, engraved frontispiece on first verso, title page on second recto – and I sewed all the sections together and left them on Jack’s bench in time for his half-past-seven start. Despite my empty stomach, I slept soundly at last, well nigh oblivious to Peter’s moans of pain and fitful snores.

In the morning I let Jack in, settled Lucinda with some sewing in the kitchen, and returned to the workshop. Hands on hips, I stood looking at Jack, waiting for him to look up at me, but he did not; he continued to prepare the cords and boards. Then he snorted, as if trying to suppress a laugh, and I giggled at the sound, and soon he was chuckling too. Finally he turned his back on me to fiddle with the laying-press and said with a guffaw, ‘I thought I’d seen everything, me, living by the river!’ I grabbed the duster from the rail and wiped down the bench with what felt like alacrity, and Jack turned his head round and winked at me. I cocked my head and my hip towards him in one motion, and grinned.

‘But what do you reckon, we don’t show the old man?’

‘Mr D? Do him the world of good!’

‘Hark at you! Vile little river-scamp! Be the end of him, more like.’

‘Nah, keep him busy in there.’

‘Impudent lad! Give your red rag a holiday, Jack-a-dandy.’

‘Beg pardon, Mrs D. Didn’t mean no harm.’

Now it was my turn to wink at him, and he beamed across his wicked freckly face like a sweet urchin.

‘Hush thy mouth, Jack,’ I added quietly, ‘because thy lord and master will be amongst us this morning.’ Jack struck his brow with his fingers in a mock salute, and the tattooed skull on his forearm grimaced at me as if it wanted to warn me that this was no laughing matter, when the only funds that had come in had gone straight out again, and every knock at the door put a terror into us. Truth be told, I was rather troubled about how Peter would fare, not only with the garnets, but with the mischievous book itself.

I need not have worried. The garnets took so much of his concentration that he never once so much as asked the title. As far as he was concerned, it was another fancy lady’s book, of no interest to him, all shimmering gold flowers and flagons, scrolls and swags. I adorned the back with the crest of Les Sauvages Nobles, and tooled the word ‘Nocturnus’, as instructed by Diprose, beneath it. And the four stones studded the corners like small pools of blood.

When the book was finally finished, the three of us gathered around the wine-coloured volume, silent with satisfaction. ‘The Decameron. Bockackio,’ Peter read from the spine. The lettering was perfectly even – Moive Bibble had packed her bags – although Peter said nothing about my handiwork.

I gave it to Jack to deliver to Holywell-street, with the map on the scrap of paper to guide him in the back way. He left at midday, and I spent the next few hours scrubbing the workshop. I cleaned the windows and oil lamps thoroughly, and garnered together every last trace of gold-dust to take back to Edwin Nightingale. Then Lucinda and I made griddlecakes for our tea. Still Jack was not back, and the clock was chiming four.

Finally, just before five, he rollicked in with a nose as red as his hair, a wet patch down the front of his coat, and a large brown-paper package in his arms.

‘Look at you! You’re bung-eyed, Jack!’ I scolded, and whipped his behind with a kitchen towel.

‘And you’re lovely, Mrs D.’