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wanted to, I could also have seen it as a token of his affection. Instead, when he handed me the ladder, I jumped to the conclusion that I was being rejected. He didn’t want to share his ladder with me any more. He wanted me to fork out on my own, become more self-reliant. That was the meaning of the gift.
    I pretended to be pleased though. My mother was with me long enough to teach me basic manners. I knew he would want me to test the ladder out, so I stood it against the side wall of the gallery, next to the shelter where the ladder-man resides from time to time, and I climbed up to the top rung and plucked the bell into life. Clang! Clang! The rungsfeel strong, I decide, coming down again. Shrewdly I’m thinking that even if I haven’t learnt to balance on a ladder without support, I can put this one to good use climbing from one balcony to the next. I won’t have to borrow the ladder-man’s equipment all the time and we can work on separate balconies if we need to. In fact, when things get unbearable with Bishop Rizi, I can bridge my own balcony and not have to rely on the ladder-man to lift me over. Of course it is a loving gift!
    It’s midnight and time to return to my post beside Guido Rizi who was last heard (but not seen) puffing in his sleep. But instead I agree to stay with the ladder-man further into the night. He takes my ladder and places it alongside his own that’s resting against the shelter. Comparing mine to the ladder-man’s in the fuzzy halo of the lantern’s light, I notice that it looks a little more squat and female than his does. The wood on mine has been sand-papered smooth and stained a lovely treacle colour, whereas the other ladder’s rough and grey. Yes, mine is a female ladder. No chance of splinters or calloused fingers from handling the rungs.
    I stand there admiring the pair of ladders. He does too. We are both doting fools. The ladder-man points to the sky; it is folding in on itself like a house of cards collapsing in a flailing wind. There is nowhere else to go but inside, under the shelter.
    When I enter the ladder-man’s cramped lair and kneel down, my skirt (minus the farthingale which I never wear up here on top deck) spreads out around me and I feel as if I’m sitting in the middle of a big puddle. The ladder-man must think we’re in an Arabic bath with this amount of silk swamping everything around. He smiles, keeping his lips pressed closed (he always keeps them closed when he smiles) and picks up the regal tide of my skirt and carries it around with him while he readies himself to sleep. He’s a skinny dragon with a wrap-around tail. He lies down next to me and I look into his river-brown eyes that make resting beside him so easy. He grips my skirt tight. I slip my hand in his pocket, take out a knob of chalk and hold it out to him.
    ‘Please tell me your name.’
    I can’t go forward without his name. But he looks away and I can see he won’t comply, so I speculate that he must have done something bad down there when he lived among streets and horses. He doesn’t want me to know his name because his reputation is smeared, like mine is.
    ‘Did you commit a felony down there?’ I ask all agog, and he looks at me in distress; then I find his body and face retracting before my eyes and I realise I’m losing my attachment to his aerial world. The scene changes abruptly as in a dream and I’m back in my bedchamber lying besideGuido Rizi who is still puffing in his sleep like a man who’s short of breath. Rizi is sweating. He smells like the venison stew we ate this evening. Violeta’s specialty. I tell myself to ‘get up Paula’. Search in the dark for the perfume shaker. Douse sheets and furniture; drive the dribble-scents away.
    I’m wishing I hadn’t accused the ladder-man of wrongdoing. Would someone of such doe-eyed sweetness be capable of wickedness?
    I fall asleep with the toneless words of the ladder-man grunting recrimination in my ear: ‘If you