Jane felt the other girl’s nudge and glanced up. The Foxes were leaving the house together. She kept her eyes on them, not moving at all until they were a good forty yards ahead. Then she stood. Only a few people around; they’d be easy to follow.

  ‘Which one do you want?’ Sally asked softly.

  ‘Her.’ The man seemed like the real danger, and Sally was the quick, furious fighter; she’d be on him before he could act. It was the woman who intrigued her. Able to hide without giving away any sense of herself. She seemed like someone with experience, likely to be wary and alert.

  At North Street the couple exchanged a few words then parted company. Jane watched Sally slide away, keeping the man in sight.

  Mrs Fox walked into town with quick, deliberate strides. Jane followed and thought about Woodstock; she’d read more of the book last night. The glitter of Charles the king arriving from abroad, and the monarchy restored. All the colours and the pageant of it. It must have felt as if London was coming alive after sleeping for so long.

  The woman walked down Briggate, stopping often to look at the displays in windows. A little beyond the place where the Moot Hall had once stood, she disappeared into a shop. A dressmaker, Jane saw as she passed. An expensive one to have her premises here.

  That was curious; the Foxes didn’t look as if they possessed real money. Their clothes were neat enough but unremarkable. They were living in a very ordinary house, hardly a fashionable, expensive address. Yet somehow Frederick Fox had secured himself a pardon from death, then come back to the place he’d been arrested. Try as she might, Jane couldn’t fit any of those pieces together.

  Ten full minutes passed before the woman came out again, nothing in her arms. She looked up and down the street, as if she couldn’t decide which direction to take. Finally, she retraced her steps. Jane stayed behind her, well back and on the other side of the street. Rosie probably knew the dressmaker; she could discover what Mrs Fox had wanted in there.

  The woman returned to Middle Fold. A single errand. Never glanced over her shoulder to judge whether someone was behind her. Something felt wrong. She couldn’t understand the purpose of the trip, and Jane worried: could the woman have seen her? She didn’t think so but … Mrs Fox was tricky.

  The morning passed slowly, another hour until the front door of the house opened and the woman came out again. She’d changed into simpler clothes, a plain cotton dress, and a thin cotton shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She was carrying a basket, eyes moving all around before she began to walk.

  From the hidden spot, Jane watched her go. She allowed the woman a long start, then very cautiously she began to follow.

  Jane stayed well behind her all the way down Mabgate, past the clamour and hot metal stink of Hope Foundry to Lady Bridge and across Timble Beck, towards a tangle of small streets where the houses were so new they weren’t yet black with soot. For a moment Jane wondered if Mrs Fox might try to vanish in there, but she kept to the main road.

  At the parish church, she turned up Kirkgate, still walking purposefully. Between a pair of ancient houses she took the ginnel that led into Grey’s Court.

  Jane stopped. She couldn’t follow the woman there without being seen, and the court had three entrances. She found a place by the passage through to Fleece Yard to settle and watch. It was a chance to think, to see if she could understand exactly what was happening.

  Had the earlier trip out, when Mrs Fox wore her good clothes, been a test, to judge whether anyone was behind her?

  But why? What was she doing? Had Grey’s Court, with its different exits, been a way to throw off any possible pursuit or was she visiting there? Jane glanced at the entrance again. She wasn’t going to find the answers now.

  SIX

  Simon watched Rosie frown as she listened closely to Jane. None of this made sense. Perhaps they simply didn’t know enough yet, but he couldn’t find a path into it. They were staring at mysteries. At shadows.

  ‘Do you think she knew you were there?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t tell.’ Jane’s answer came slowly, thoughtfully. ‘At Barton’s house yesterday, I never sensed her.’

  Did that mean anything? He couldn’t be sure. The woman might be anywhere in Leeds by now.

  ‘You did everything you could,’ he assured her.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Rosie asked after Jane had gone.

  ‘Something I should probably have done right at the beginning,’ he said, pushing himself up. ‘I’m going to try to find out about the Foxes. See if that pardon came from any type of connection.’

  ‘What about me? Where do you want me to go?’ There was eagerness in her voice. She enjoyed working again.

  ‘You could talk to that dressmaker.’

  ‘It sounds like Mrs Carson’s shop.’ Her face brightened into a smile. ‘I know her. She loves to gossip.’

  This was a time when he could have used Barnabas Wade’s knowledge. A disbarred lawyer, he’d spent years scraping a living by selling worthless stocks to travellers as they passed through Leeds on their coach journeys. Each season he seemed to grow poorer. Finally, one morning last winter, his landlord had found him dead in his cheap room when he came to collect the rent.

  Wade had known about money: who had it, who’d lost it. About families and ancestors. He’d have had information about the Foxes, unless their story was all lies. But with Wade gone, who else was there to ask?

  ‘I can’t help you, Simon,’ George Mudie said. He rubbed his hands on his leather apron. ‘I asked a few questions after he was given that pardon.’

  ‘You never said.’

  He shrugged. ‘I was curious. Didn’t find any reason for it. Nobody I talked to knew about him. There’s supposed to be a wealthy family called Fox up towards Richmond, but I’ve no idea if he’s related.’

  ‘He told Barton he came from around there.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s true, then. You’ll need to ask someone from that area.’

  Plenty of people had wondered about the pardon, Simon discovered as he moved around Leeds, but nobody had answers.

  Porter sat behind his desk at the courthouse, papers piled around him. The windows were open, all the noises of the street drifting in.

  ‘I can write to the constable in Richmond,’ he offered. ‘I’m curious myself, especially if he’s back in Leeds. You say he hasn’t threatened Barton?’

  ‘Not yet. Hasn’t even approached him.’

  He frowned. ‘Fox is a free man. He received his pardon; he has every right to be here as long as he doesn’t break any laws. You said you have your girls on him?’

  ‘One of them. The other’s following his wife.’

  The constable nodded. ‘I’ll see if they know anything up there, but don’t expect too much. Fox probably isn’t even his real name.’

  Simon snorted. ‘I doubt it is. Still, it would be useful to know.’ He paused. ‘If anyone up around Richmond can describe him—’

  ‘I’ll ask.’

  After she left Simon’s house on Swinegate, Jane started for home. The day sat still and heavy on Leeds. She had time to sit with Mrs Shields, maybe learn a little more from her about the plants growing in the small garden outside the cottage.

  But her feet didn’t take her back to Green Dragon Yard. The pull of curiosity was too strong. She ambled along Vicar Lane, down Templar Street and Crown Street, between the houses to Prince Street, then across the small footbridge over to Mabgate and the few yards to Middle Fold. What game was Mrs Fox playing?

  The woman obviously knew Leeds; going to Grey’s Court, with its many ways in and out to watch, made that obvious. There had to be some reason for whatever she’d done; Jane wanted to discover what it was.

  She was still there, deep in the shadows, when the woman returned almost two hours later, walking, a basket heavy with groceries in the crook of her arm.

  Quietly, Jane moved away, certain that Mrs Fox was done for the day. She’d had all the time she needed for her tasks.

  On the way home she spent a few minutes with Dodson, the one-legged old soldier who begged around town. He was a good, quiet man, someone who saw and remembered things. But there was little he could do to help her on this. She tipped a few coins in his cup and kept walking to Green Dragon Yard.

  ‘Fox walked around for almost an hour after he left his wife this morning,’ Sally said. She drank, then tore off a piece of bread. ‘He was trying to see if anyone was behind him.’

  ‘He never realised you were there?’ Simon asked.

  ‘No.’ Not pride; a simple matter of fact. Jane had taught her the art of following and she’d learned well.

  ‘Did he end up at Barton’s house?’

  ‘Close enough to watch it.’

  ‘What about Barton? Any sign of him?’

  ‘The servant brought the little gig and he drove off. Not long after that, his wife went out with the maid. They were gone for the rest of the morning and came back about half an hour before he did. Then they stayed at home for the rest of the day.’

  ‘How about Fox? Did he stay there or leave?’ Rosie wanted to know. She was leaning forward, listening intently, forearms resting on the kitchen table.

  ‘He stayed where he was the whole time.’

  ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘The church clock had just struck four. After it was obvious he was going to Middle Fold, I came back here.’

  ‘He never strayed on to Barton’s property?’ Simon wondered. That could be a trespassing charge.

  ‘No.’ She stood and stretched, and he heard her footsteps on the stairs, clattering up to her room in the attic. How could she be so silent sometimes and so loud at others?

  ‘What are these people doing, Simon?’ Rosie said. ‘I talked to the dressmaker. She remembered Mrs Fox. The woman never said much, just came in, examined some fabrics and patterns but never bought anything. Wasting her time, Mrs Carson said.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He stared at her, wondering what they were planning. ‘I have no idea at all.’

  Jane was dragged back to the world by the knock on the door. She’d been so caught up in Woodstock as Scott’s words carried her along with the Cavaliers and Roundheads that she had to blink a few times to be certain where she was as Mrs Shields looked up from her own novel and smiled at her.

  ‘A good book can do that, child.’ Another knock. ‘You’d better see who wants you.’

  Sally was standing in the deep twilight, wearing the same old dress she put on every day, with a thin shawl spread across her shoulders and a face filled with anguish.

  ‘Can you come and help me? It’s the children.’

  She led the way through town, past the drinkers and the travellers gathered around the inns and the beershops, down Wellington Road and beyond Bean Ing to the patch of empty ground between Park Mills and Airedale Mills. All about them, buildings were rising day by day, growing walls of brick and stone for new factories. The place had changed in such a short time, Jane realised. No more than four years since she’d buried her money out here to keep it safe, in a tin under a tree; now a machine or a loom covered that ground.

  A fire had been lit, sending sparks into the night. The children had used old wood, scraps gathered from the sites where people were building, anything they’d been able to scavenge that might burn. It gave warmth and comfort, welcome even on a June night. More than that, it offered safety.

  There were twenty or thirty of them, the youngest no more than three, looking lost and terrified, rising to somewhere around Sally’s age.

  On the way down, the girl had been silent, shaking her head as Jane asked questions. Now she beckoned a boy forward.

  ‘Wilfred, this is Jane. Tell her what’s been happening.’

  He was ten, possibly eleven, all elbows and knees, wearing a torn, grubby shirt under a coat made for someone much older and bigger, with ragged trousers torn at both knees. His toes stuck out from the broken front of his buckled shoes. Just a stick of a lad with grazes and cuts across his knuckles and cheeks and sadness at the back of his eyes.

  ‘Men have been coming,’ he began, wondering how much to say. He glanced at Sally; she nodded. ‘It started a few nights ago. They have knives. One of them carries a pistol. They force us to give them any money we have and they take our food. They …’ His voice tailed off and she saw his face redden in the firelight. ‘They catch some of the girls.’

  ‘I’ve seen them,’ Sally said. ‘There are four of them. Too many to fight them all on my own.’

  She’d grown wiser, Jane decided. Now she was thinking and planning. Not too long before, she’d have charged in.

  ‘How long has this been happening?’

  ‘The past three nights.’

  Wilfred looked from one of their faces to the other. She could see the hope in his eyes, that they could save the children.

  ‘Did you try to stop them?’ Jane asked him.

  ‘I wanted to.’ He hung his head, ashamed of not being able to protect the others. ‘Before I could do anything, they hit me and laughed at me.’

  ‘You tried,’ Sally told him. ‘You tried hard.’

  Jane had known camps like this. They’d helped her stay alive during the years she lived on the streets. Out here, life was so brittle, so easily ended. She’d seen too many mornings when someone had disappeared or died, beyond help.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘We stop them when they come,’ Sally told her. ‘After that, we find them.’

  ‘What do you want to do then? Kill them?’ she asked, relieved when the girl shook her head.

  ‘Not unless we have to. But we need to make sure they don’t come back.’

  How could they do that? She looked around the faces. Probably most of the children here wouldn’t see another year on this earth. She’d been different; she’d had the will to survive. The desire to live that pushed her through each night and into the next day, and the ruthlessness that required. So had Sally. They were survivors. Now the girl used much of the money she earned with Simon to try and keep all these alive. It was a losing battle, and she knew it, but she had to keep fighting it. She was always so certain about it. About so much. At her age, Jane had been unsure about the world. Each time she made a mistake, she’d cut herself. To punish herself and make sure she remembered. She still carried the faint scars on her arms. All that lay far behind her now.

  Jane understood why the men came. They believed it was sport, amusement after a night of drinking. Easy game. Some­thing a little different that let them swagger around and made them feel big and important. She’d seen plenty like that. Strutting and preening, and underneath it all, little men.

  There was no chance that she’d refuse to help. ‘Are they likely to return tonight?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sally replied, no doubt in her voice. ‘They’ll keep coming until someone fights back and beats them. We’re going do that.’

  There was never any real silence at night in a camp. Always an undercurrent of voices in the darkness. The crackle of the fire as someone fed it with more branches. Finally people settled, but even then she could hear the sniffles and coughs and the cries of bad dreams.

  Jane was comfortable, sitting quietly, wrapped in the blackness. Sally stayed on the other side of the group. The girl had decided that would be best; a greater chance of keeping everyone safe.

  She let her thoughts roam, shifting from Woodstock to the Foxes. Whatever plan for revenge they had, it was impossible to follow. She searched until she recalled a word from a book she’d read: labyrinth. Twisted and tangled. Everything would have to come clear in time. Until then, her job was to wait and watch. To be ready.

  The noise sliced through her thoughts. In an instant, she was on her feet, knife in hand. A shout from thirty yards away in the darkness, the heavy sound of men running. From the corner of her eye, she picked out a silhouette in the firelight. Sally. Crouching, prowling as she edged forward. Jane stood her ground. Let them come.

  Four of them. Even at a distance, she could smell the brandy on their breath and catch the glint of a knife. Jane tightened the grip on her blade and kept still as they drew closer. And closer.

  They were yelling, here to torment and scare. None of them anticipated a fight.

  It didn’t last more than twenty seconds.

  She stood facing a pair of men. They stopped as soon as they saw the weapon. One tried a wild swipe at her. Too slow; he only found air. His friend lunged for her and discovered she’d cut his arm.

  They both turned and fled as their courage failed them.

  After another moment, only one of the four remained, shifting nervously from foot to foot as he faced Sally. Dodging back, never daring to strike. Jane ran at him, yelling as the children cheered. As soon as he saw her, he scurried away.

  ‘You stay with them,’ she said to Sally. ‘I’ll follow him.’

  It was easy to do. He was loud enough to rouse the dead as he dashed through town. She didn’t even need to be careful, but moved along behind him with her skirts flying. Fear was pushing him along.

  He never looked back, running all the way to North Street, so easy to follow. No chance to see his face, but she watched as he used a key, then the click of a lock as he let himself into the Barton house.

  SEVEN

  ‘A son?’ Sally asked.

  ‘It has to be,’ Jane told her. The girl had arrived at the cottage early, eager to hear everything that had happened as they walked down to the house on Swinegate. But the news took her aback.

  ‘We need to tell Simon.’

  Jane had spent a long, wakeful time weighing that once she settled in bed. The thoughts had crowded sleep away. They might well have terrified the young man; his simple sport had suddenly proved too dangerous. If he and his friends had learned their lesson … perhaps they could let it lie.