Chapter 9: Wages

I was already moving to the door.

"Where is he now?"

"Still up there," Ottoline said. "He's making a speech."

Cian had his waxed jacket half on.

"I'll drive you."

"No." I stopped in the doorway. "Number four."

He held his hands up and sat back down on the edge of the desk.

I took a taxi to Dawson Street and went in the back door, because my key code was dead but the lane door still stuck.

The workshop ran the length of the second floor.

Nine benches stood under the long windows, each with a leather skin slung underneath to catch the filings.

The gas torches were off. Nobody was working.

Nine silversmiths stood in their aprons in the middle of the floor.

Fintan stood in front of them, in his waistcoat with his sleeves rolled.

He saw me come in and smiled.

"Well. There she is. Ask her yourselves."

Nine faces turned to me.

I knew all of them.

I had brought cakes up these stairs every Christmas for six years.

The youngest, a red-haired lad of about twenty-five who'd finished his apprenticeship in June, stepped forward.

"Is it true? You called in your money, and now there's nothing for us on the thirtieth?"

"I did call it in."

A murmur went round the benches.

"There you go," Fintan said. "She wants hers. You lot can whistle for yours."

"It's my money," I said. "It always was. I'm asking for it back."

"You're asking for it back from the people who make the silver."

Fintan shook his head at me, sorrowful, for the audience.

"Six years you played the saint. Now look."

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