‘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.

The few men unloading the pallets carried on their business without taking any notice of the carriage, or of Rosa herself, and she was just wondering what to do when a voice came from the other side of the courtyard.

‘Rosa!’

‘Sebastian.’

He helped her from the carriage, his tanned face still bearing its Indian colour, incongruous against the smoke-stained grey of the building and the pale, drawn faces of the workmen unloading the barge.

‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

‘Unloading the shipment of matchsticks. We don’t split them here, that’s done at another site. Here they are only dipped and packed for sale. Now, where shall we begin?’

He looked up and Rosa saw a giant clock fixed in the middle of the longest side of the courtyard. It read half past eleven.

‘Perhaps with the soup kitchens, for they will be quiet at this time of day since they do not open until noon. If we wait until later the stench and crush will be unbearable. This way. Watch your step. The cobbles are rough, I’m afraid.’

He took her arm and led her carefully across the yard, skirting round the puddles in the cobbles and the drains. They were about to pass under an archway, through a door, when there was the sound of an altercation at the gate.

‘You know the rules, Fishwick.’ A man’s voice raised in anger. ‘Now, out, before I summon the guvnor.’

‘Pleash, Mr Wyndham, shur.’ The other’s voice was thin and hopeless, and slurred as if he were missing teeth. ‘My wife, she’s very bad . . .’

‘What’s going on?’ Sebastian strode across and the gatekeeper immediately pulled off his cap and knocked his stick against the other man’s arm, who hastily pulled off his own. He too had a scarf around his face and jaw and Rosa noticed that his hand was missing three fingers and the last was cut short at the knuckle.

‘Bill Fishwick, shir,’ said the second man in a dull voice. ‘Which I arsht pardon, milordship, sir, but it wan’t idlenesh, truly. My wife took ill, I couldn’t leave her . . .’

‘Fishwick’s late for work, Mr Knyvet, sir,’ said the gatekeeper gruffly. ‘For the second time this month. Which I told him, the first time was the warning, the second time the sacking.’

Sebastian looked at Fishwick, at his pinched face. There was no hope in the man’s eyes – they looked dead and lifeless already.

He shook his head.

‘You know the rules, Fishwick.’

‘But—’

‘See him out, Wyndham.’

‘Please!’ Rosa heard the man’s desperate shouts from behind her, as Sebastian walked her away, still holding her arm. ‘Please!’

‘I know what you’ll say, Rosa,’ Sebastian said calmly, as they passed under the arch and through a doorway. ‘But they all have a sob story. And if I made an exception for him it would be grossly unfair to all the other workers – men, women and children – who struggle in with circumstances just as bad, or worse. There are a hundred workers for every vacancy, a hundred waiting in line for the soup kitchen. How is it fair to keep a worthless man in a job while conscientious workers wait in line for charity?’

She nodded numbly, trying not to let her feelings show in her face. He had said she would be shocked. She was determined not to be.

‘Here is the soup kitchen.’ Sebastian opened a door and Rosa went inside an echoing hall, filled with close-packed trestles and benches. Three women were laying out cups and bowls at one end and just next door, through a serving hatch, Rosa could see a sweating cook stirring a huge steaming vat over a range. It smelt strongly of cabbage and something bitter that she did not recognize.

As Sebastian came in the women looked up and their eyes widened in shock, then one by one they dropped into stiff curtseys.

‘Please don’t worry.’ Sebastian raised a hand. ‘There is no need to stop work. My fiancée here,’ he patted Rosa’s arm, ‘wanted a tour of the works. We shall not detain you.’ He turned back to Rosa and explained, ‘The facilities here are quite separate from the factory. Those two doors lead to the street; one is the entrance and the men and women queue there to be allowed entry.’

Rosa nodded. The ragged queue she had seen around the corner of the factory made sudden sense.