Isabella's Heiress by N.P. Griffiths Page A

bridge and the smell got stronger. Emma covered her nose but it didn’t help, it seeped through her fingers regardless.
    â€œI know; it stinks doesn’t it?” Taryn was following the same vain course of action “It helps if you shallow breathe.” She took two short breaths to emphasise the point.
    They carried on walking with Emma speeding up to reach the other end of the bridge as quickly as possible. At the halfway point, the burning in her chest got too much and she had to suck in a deep lungful of air. The sudden taste of excrement and filth that struck the back of her throat was too much for Emma and she retched and leant forward, staggering into a nearby recess to gather her senses. Placing a hand against the wall, something sharp then crumbly dug in to her palm. She removed her hand to see the stone flake away from where she had put pressure. The bridge had been a pristine white when they started out but there was now a grimy film covering it, which was eating away at the stonework as if ages long past now touched it.
    A deep, mournful toll filled the air; the sound came from the large church she had seen from the other side of the bridge. A bell was being rung somewhere inside and every chime felt like a knife to Emma. She looked to Father Eamon and saw a clouded expression cross his face, as Taryn turned away, unable to hold Emma’s eyes with her own.
    A shadow was cast across the rooftops by the church. It was clearer now, its profile thrown into sharp relief by the few rays of sun that cut through the desolate sky. The spire was in the middle of a long and ornate edifice and it towered over everything around it, its regular sides standing in stark contrast to the low-roofed and uneven buildings that made up the surrounding streets. Along its walls were large, ornate stained-glass windows, broken up by slender brick columns whilst above them, and just below the roof, were smaller windows set at the same intervals. It seemed to Emma that the building had just landed there, instead of being built from the ground up like everything else.
    â€œIt’s St Pauls.” Taryn’s voice brought Emma back.
    Emma looked at the church and then at Taryn, “That’s not St Pauls.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t believe it at first either, but it really is St Pauls.”
    Emma couldn’t believe the monument in front of her bore any relation to a building she had known all her life. She looked over at Father Eamon.
    â€œTaryn’s right. That is St Pauls. It’s the cathedral that stood before the fire.”
    â€œThe fire?”
    â€œThe Great Fire.”
    â€œOh, right.” She could remember seeing pictures in old school textbooks and knew that there had been a previous cathedral on the site, but to see it standing there, looking down at her, caused Emma to shrink in to the bridge wall. “Wow.”
    â€œWow, indeed.” Said Father Eamon smiling “Come, we should make haste. ‘Tis getting dark.”
    At the north end of the bridge marble way to mud and stones and it became apparent to Emma that Father Eamon had been correct when he had said that London could change.
    Emma found herself surrounded by buildings stretching haphazardly upwards, each additional story jutting out a little further than the one below. The road was wide but it was little more than a dirt track and Emma’s ankles became unsteady on the pitted surface. The smell from the river started to fade only to be replaced by the smell of animal dung and human waste
    As she looked at the surrounding buildings, all made of half-timbered oak frames, with walls of wattle and clay and windows of filthy, opaque glass; Emma felt a chill set in to her. Everything was different. The buildings were uneven and in some cases looked like they were about to toppleover, such was the overhang from some of the upper floors. The walls had splits in them, with reeds poking out where water damage had caused