The Serpent in the Garden
Chapter One
Joshua Pope was not expecting a visitor to call. It was an October evening in the year 1786, and as was his habit when circumstances permitted, he intended to pass the evening at his easel. He had donned his morocco slippers and Indian nightgown, and taken a light supper -- a slab of cold pie and a bottle of claret -- to his parlor in Saint Peter's Court.
Outside, an autumn tempest was roaring. A keen east wind howled through Saint Martin's Lane and the surrounding alleys and streets. Rain flailed roofs with such insistence it drowned the cries of streetwalkers, scavengers, and watchmen in this vicinity of London. The wind creaked the signboards on Slaughter's Coffee House, the Coach and Horses Inn, and outside the gilded showrooms of cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale. The tempest picked debris from the gutter and threw it against the windows of the house once occupied by the eminent painter Francis Hayman; it dislodged slates from the roofs of the great architect James Paine and the renowned tenor John Beard as easily as those on a hovel. It penetrated to the very fabric of Joshua Pope's rooms, ... read full excerpt from: The Serpent in the Garden: A Novel ebook
