I brought Madame Celeste to mind. Never look down; never let go; and never give up hope. Thats what the old girl told me time after time when she trained me for the heights and I was swaying under the beams in her attic. Tell truth, it all seemed like a game back then.

And that last is the most important rule of all. If you ever allow yourself to think you might fall, you will. Its as simple as that. I bit down hard on the inside of my bottom lip to bring myself up. I wasnt going to show weakness now. I wasnt going to fall. Out of habit I brought my hand up to my collar and felt for Joeys ring and the Christopher. For a moment I was surprised they werent there and then I remembered they were lying together in a drawer at The Palace along with the broken chain.

I heard a scraping sound and a light flared in the room ahead before dying to a glowing red point.

'Tell me, Katharine, are you going to come in or are you intending to stand there gawping like a herring, girl?

Oh, that voice so sweet and girlish. Cultured too. When I heard it again, I realised that my grandmothers accent was very like the one Id heard on Joey. Neither of them spoke Limehouse these days. Thinking about it, I wondered if Lady Ginger ever had.

'I am waiting. The voice came again from the dark.

I know I said it was girlish, but dont for a moment think of it as soft. Lady Gingers words were like something noxious coughed up by a pampered cat. One minute its purring and curled up neat on your lap, next its hawking out a half-digested rat head.

I tightened my grip on the handle of my bag and stepped into the room. Immediately the door swung shut behind me.

'Come closer, Katharine, I want to look at you.

I paused, letting my eyes get used to the dark. At first all I could make out was a bulk of black shadow immediately ahead. Over to the right, but deeper into the room, a stubby candle stood on a low table set in a sort of alcove. As I stared I saw the pattern flicker on the curtains behind the candle and realised it was a covered window. The air was thick with opium smoke. The sweet tarry fug of it was so dense I could almost feel it on my face. But there were other scents too something medicinal and tartly floral masking the smell of disease.

'Bring the candle to me. Her voice crackled like old paper.

I put down my bag, went across to the table in the window and lifted the silver candle holder. The flame jittered about as my fingers trembled. I counted to ten, willing my hand to be still. When the candle steadied I turned and stared at the shadowy mass that I now recognised as one of them great old boxed-up beds with hangings up to the ceiling. I couldnt see my grandmother through the thick folds of fabric.

'Set it beside the bed.

I thought I saw the red drapery move. Beside the bed there was a table with a glass and jug on the top. I walked over and placed the candle next to the jug, pushing the glass back to make a little more space. Just as I released the curved handle of the candle tray a hand shot through the bed curtain, closing round my wrist so tight I yelped.

The hand was more bone than skin, yellow as parchment in the dim light. I could feel the stone set into a great gold ring on Lady Gingers middle finger dig into the soft skin of my arm and I heard the familiar clatter of the bracelets on her arm. Sharp black nails gouged deep.

'You will adjust my pillows, Katharine. The hand loosened from my wrist and was drawn back into the curtains as she began to cough. The rasping sound went on for several seconds more than was comfortable. I was beginning to wonder if Id been summoned to God knows where only to stand by and hear the old cow choke up her last, when she spoke again. 'Draw them back.

I glanced up. The bed was at least seven foot high and Oriental in design. Black lacquer columns painted over with little gold figures and topped with gilded pagodas stood at each corner. On three sides the red hangings spilled down from curved pelmets of lacquered wood set high between the columns, giving the bed the look of a small theatre. It was very like a stage set Lucca might have painted up for Swami Jonah, only I got the impression it was a good deal older than any of The Ladys halls.

My halls.

'The curtain, if you please.

I reached to the place where the hand had come from, catching the edge of the fabric to pull it aside.

I gasped and covered my nose. I couldnt stop myself I had to take a sudden step back at the smell that came rolling out from the dark within. At the same moment my mind washed up a word Lucca had used once catafalque. He was describing some painting hed seen at one of the public galleries and Id asked him to explain what it meant. I liked the sound of it, even if it was a box of death. Id tucked that word away somewhere, but it came to me again now as I stood looking into what was most surely a fabric-lined tomb.

In just two months Lady Ginger had changed. In the flickering glow of the candle I hardly recognised the gristly knot of skin hunched in the midst of stained sheets and velvet bolsters.

She was dressed in a black embroidered gown that gaped wide at the neck revealing a throat that was strung like a broken violin. She still wore her grey hair in a plait, but it was a poor shabby thing. I noticed that the hair at the front of her head was so thin and spare I could see the moony gleam of her scalp through it. Her cheekbones jutted out so sharp now beneath the hollowed pits of her eyes that she put me in mind of a rook skull Joey kept on his windowsill when we were kids.

Hed found it in a park one day when Nanny Peck had taken us out and away from Ma. 'You keep that close, now, Joseph, and the King of the Birds will never harm you. Thats what the old girl had told him. It was another one of her superstitions from the old country. I always felt guilty about that little skull. Id smashed it apart by accident one day when I opened that window, but I never told Joey what Id done.

Lady Ginger smiled, her black lips pulling at the skin stretched tight across the bones of her face.

'Cat got your tongue, Katharine?

I realised I was staring at her. I shook my head slowly and moved the candle to the edge of the table to give us more light. She blinked as the glow played across her sunken features, throwing valleys of flesh into shadow and bringing harsh illumination to the ranges of her chin, nose and cheekbones. She was a fearful sight, but I didnt want her to see I was scared.

And Ill tell you this for nothing: one thing about my grandmother was the same as ever. Her black eyes glittered like French glass beads sewn into her head. If the life I saw caught there was anything to go by, Lady Ginger would likely keep her body alive for another hundred years by will power alone.

As she looked up at me she began to laugh. Gobs of dark saliva dribbled onto her chin as she rocked in the bed, setting off the jingle of the little golden bells hanging off the roofs of the pagodas at each corner. She pushed the grey plait over her shoulder and scrabbled a claw-like hand into the nest of sheets beside her, the bangles clattering as they slid down her stick of an arm. She pushed a bolster aside and revealed a long carved opium pipe sitting on a small tray balanced across another cushion. She snatched the pipe up and brought it to her lips sucking greedily so that the bowl glowed red. It was what Id seen through the bed hangings as I stood at the door.

She inhaled deeply and shuddered. Her eyes rolled back in the sockets as two thin trails of smoke wound from her nose, rising up into the canopy overhead. She nodded, opened her eyes and fixed her gaze on me again.

'It does not bring the dreams now, Katharine, not as it once did. Neither does it bring sleep. I do not sleep.

She took another pull and sighed. 'It brings relief. She placed the pipe back on the tray. 'I believe I asked you to straighten my pillows. It wasnt a question.

She twisted about and indicated that she required me to pull up the pillows at her back so she could sit straighter in the bed. I hesitated for a moment and she saw it. Her lips twitched. 'You will soon become accustomed to the stench of corrupting flesh, Katharine, as I have. Now your assistance . . .

I leaned forward and pulled the pillows into place behind her, then I moved a couple of the bolsters over too. I smoothed the sheets and helped her settle back. Through the black silk gown I could feel the knobbles of every bone in her back and the jagged edges of her shoulder blades. By accident I brushed the skin of her neck with my fingers and it was cold.

'Good. We may begin.

She began to scratch the bed covers with the curved black nails of her left hand and it took a moment before I understood that she was inviting me to sit on the edge of the bed. I climbed up and sat there under the canopy. She was right about the smell, I was getting used to it now.

'I have received several reports on your activities. Some are not pleasing to me.

I shook my head and raised my hand. 'I havent come here for a lecture.

Of an instant I realised she didnt frighten me so much as disgust me. This place, this room, wherever it was, it was all show. My grandmother was good at putting on a performance, Ill give her that, but I knew what she was up to. I found my voice again now.

'No. Ive come here for some answers. After what I went through I think I deserve them.

Lady Ginger coughed and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. 'Deserve? There was a sharp, metallic edge to her little voice. 'That is an interesting word to use, Katharine, when I see very little evidence to convince me that you deserve anything. She leaned forward. 'You have the letters?

I held her gaze. 'Im not here to talk about correspondence. Where am I? And why did your old China boy have to drug me to bring me here?

She scratched the side of her nose and I could hear the scrape of her nails on paper-thin flesh. 'That is not your concern. I have summoned you here to answer some of my questions.

I folded my arms and leaned back against the painted bed column. 'And Ive come here to ask some. Lets start with our father, shall we mine and Joeys, that is. Who was he, then? And where is he now?

Lady Ginger closed her eyes. 'This is tiresome.

'Maybe for you, but not for me. I reckon I have a good right to know about my own family. I put an emphasis on that last word, echoing the way she used to mouth it about in the halls. 'And what about you and Ma? If she was your daughter you must have- Her eyes snapped open. 'I must have what?

I wasnt rightly sure how to finish that. The thought of Lady Ginger indulging in any sort of romantic liaison seemed absurdly grotesque. When I didnt answer she reached into the bed sheets and produced a lace-edged kerchief. She spat something black into it and folded it carefully into a neat square. I noticed the rings hung loose below her knuckles now.

'I do not have time for this. She pushed the square under a pillow again and flicked a desiccated hand at the room around us. 'This is my . . . retreat. It has been in my family our family for generations. At present you do not need to know more: not a name, not a town, not even a county. It is irrelevant.

I shifted on the bed, so that I was sitting cross-legged facing her. The little bells up top went off again as I tucked my boots under my skirt. 'Irrelevant? Thats an interesting word too. So all this . . . I nodded at the room. 'Its another one of your secrets then, is it? Another one of your games?

She blinked slowly, her hooded lids pleating themselves into the sockets of her eyes.

'Only if you regard dying as a pastime, Katharine. I do not think it likely that I will ever leave this room again, let alone this house. That is why I left Paradise in your care. I thought you understood that?

'Oh, I understand all right. Telfermans been going through it. Youve made me a woman of property, a woman of means. Youve made your own granddaughter a woman whos so deep in every filthy, stinking trade run between The Isle of Dogs in the east and The Tower in the west and from Bethnal in the north down to Deptford in the south that its a wonder shes not coated in flies.

Her lips twitched. 'Telferman tells me- '-That Im good at it. I show promise. Thats what your letter said. Ive got all the details lodged right here. I tapped my head. 'Every name, every penny. You dont need to fret about Paradise. My understanding of it is perfect and now Im going to run it my own way. Like I said, I didnt come here for a sermon. I need- 'You need my assistance. Lady Ginger cut me off sharp. Her eyes narrowed. 'Tell me, it didnt take long before your charming brother brought trouble to you, did it?

I didnt answer, but she must have read the look on my face because her eyes glinted with a sort of triumph.

'Oh yes, Katharine. Never underestimate me. I know what came back from Paris with you, even if you do not.

All the questions I thought I was going to ask my grandmother when we finally met again went out of my head.

'You . . . you know about the boy about Robbie? I spoke too quick.

She smiled thinly. 'I know about his father too. I fear he is playing a very dangerous game.

The thought of David Lennox made my cheeks burn. I saw him sitting in front of me again in Joeys room, his clear green eyes glassy with tears as he begged for my help. The thought of any harm coming to him made me catch my breath. Something lodged in my throat.

I swallowed hard. 'Ive sent word to him, to Da . . . Mr Lennox, telling him to come and take back his boy, and Ive told Joey too, told him to set things straight. Told him it wasnt right to put folk in danger.

Lady Ginger reached up to pull her plait over her shoulder. She rolled the fraying end between her fingers. 'But it is too late. She glanced up, the candlelight gleaming in her eyes. 'You do know, I trust, who you brought back from Paris with you?

I shook my head.

'Death.

The tip of her tongue appeared as she said it. I swear she savoured the taste of that word in her sticky, black mouth. She was enjoying herself. I could see that now and it made my belly boil.

'If you know so much already, why am I here? Why dont you deal with it yourself, like you used to? I mimicked her voice and heard the shrill note rise in my own voice as I went on. 'Why dont you get one of your spies onto it? I know youve got plenty of them working for you still. Telferman, maybe Tan Seng and his brother Lok at The Palace. Then theres that dainty little man with the powder-white hair in Paris . . .

'The Monseigneur? Lady nodded. 'Indeed, he has been most helpful. You have his note with you as instructed?

'His note?

She sighed. 'I am losing patience, Katharine. Telferman gave you two items of correspondence yesterday. My summons and the note from Monsieur Chartrand, the Monseigneur. Where is it?

So he was her spy. I rolled this nugget of information around in my mind and tried to make it fit into the right space. I picked at a thread on the coverlet in front of me, but jerked my head up with a yell as Lady Ginger clamped her hand down over the top of mine. She struck out quicker than an adder, twisting her nails into my skin. I was amazed to feel the strength in that wizened-up hand. Her fingers gouged like pincers.

'Where is it?

I yanked my hand away, slipped from the bed and went to retrieve my bag. My eyes had adjusted to the dimness now. Apart from the bed and the tables, there was little else in the room. I snapped open the bag and reached for the letters.

'Here is this what you mean? I handed her the folded paper with the pattern embossed at the head and the peculiar script. Lady Ginger took it from me and flapped it open.

'And what do you make of it?

I shrugged. 'Theres not a lot to make anything out of, is there? Just a string of letters.

She nodded and held the sheet near to the little candle flame. 'What do you see, Katharine?

I leaned closer. The paper was quality, Id known that from the feel of it. It was thick and silky to the touch. The creases where it was folded into three held their sharpness. Now, in the light, I could also see the finest trace of gold along the edges where it had been hand cut.

'Begin with the mark.

Lady Ginger handed it back to me and gestured to the candle. I moved closer so that I could see more clearly. I hadnt really examined the mark pressed into the paper. Now I looked properly I saw it was a splayed-out bird, something like an eagle, pinned down at the breast by a sort of shield. I frowned as I ran my fingertips over the pattern. Id seen this before or something very like it. I glanced up to find Lady Ginger staring at me.

'Unusual is it not?

I nodded. 'Its not like any bird Ive seen. Its got two heads for a start, which isnt right. But the papers the best money can buy. I doubt its the sort of stuff the Monseigneur can afford on what youre paying him.

Lady Ginger barked out a laugh, which turned into a cough. She reached under the pillow again and hawked out a ball of sticky black phlegm into the kerchief.

'And the word? She pointed at the letters.

'Is it a word? I asked, turning the paper around to try to make sense of the writing. 'I took it for a string of letters. I thought it might be a code.

It was true enough. Joey and I used to play a game with letters. Wed each choose a familiar saying, or one of Nanny Pecks best-turned phrases, and try to get the other one to guess it by writing the first letter of each word, one by one, on a piece of paper. The winner was the one who guessed the most sayings in the least amount of letters.

This wasnt a saying I recognised.

'A code, you say? I suppose you could call it that. Look again. Lady Ginger shuffled to the side of the bed and tapped the paper with a long curved nail. I turned it around to see if it meant anything upside down and then I held it on its side.

'It begins with a "K". Is it a message for me?

'In a way. She smiled and leaned back into the pillows. 'It is a message for both of us.

Id had enough of this. I tossed the letter onto the bed. Lady Ginger was running the circus just as she always had. It was very clear to me of a sudden that the only reason shed brought me here was to entertain herself.

I pushed my hair back from my eyes. 'You might as well tell me straight what youre driving at instead of talking in riddles. Start with Robbie. What do you know about him and Da . . . his father, and why is it dangerous?

She plucked the paper from the coverlet and handed it to me again. 'The answer is here. If you cannot handle this simple matter then perhaps I have made a mistake. Protecting Paradise and everyone and everything in it is no easy matter. You will find enemies in the most surprising places, always remember that.

She faltered, leaned to the right and took up the pipe again. I saw her hand shake as she fumbled for the silver strike box.

'You will light this. I took the box from her hand and scraped a Lucifer along its side, setting the flame to the bowl. Lady Ginger sucked on the pipe and moments later another great tremor went through her as the opium did its work. Just as before, she sank back into the cushions and her eyes rolled up into her head, leaving flickering slits of white.

I looked at the paper again. If it was an answer, then the question was clear as Thames mud at low tide. I ran my fingers over the embossed mark. I had seen something like it before when I rolled the I Ching dice the ones Peggy didnt approve of. But what did that mean?

'Where is the girl I saw in you?

The question made me start. Lady Ginger was staring at me again now. At the corner of her mouth there was a glistening trail of drool.

'I am prepared to guide you, Katharine, but you must make your own deductions. You must learn, as I did. It is the only way. This . . . she nodded at the note in my hand, '. . . is just the beginning. Other threats will come to your door and you must be ready. I do not doubt your courage, girl, but I chose you for your intellect and your good sense. Use them.

I scrunched the paper into a ball in my hands. 'Im not Swami Jonah, am I? This doesnt tell me anything.

'It is not Mr McCarthy you should be consulting, on this occasion. That is all I am prepared to say.

I noted that Lady Ginger used Swami Jonahs real name. She hauled herself up from the pillows and sat up straight in the bed a scrawny heap of flapping black silk and loose sallow skin. She started to cough again, a horrible rasping rattle of a noise, and reached for the glass.