Fire

by C. C. Humphreys

  The man jumped. ‘Jesu mercy, but you frightened me, Mr Pitman. Why are you lurking there?’

  ‘That’s Pitman to you. Pitman to all, king or commoner. And I lurk, as you put it, because I need to see a debtor.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Hers. Sarah…Coke.’

  ‘Sarah –?’ The man rubbed his chin. ‘Old? White hair? Missing an ear?’

  ‘Nay. Young enough. The actress.’

  ‘Oh, the whore.’

  Pitman stepped closer to grab him by the collar. ‘They are not always the same, Jenkins. And you would be advised to speak most carefully of a friend –’

  ‘No, no, no! I assure you.’ The man wriggled, unable to break the grip. ‘The actress. She is ab-ab-about the other business now.’

  Pitman frowned, loosening his hold slightly. ‘What mean you?’

  ‘Up-up there!’ He pointed to the men’s side. ‘She and the other moll, Jenny Johnson, they went up to visit the baronet not five minutes since.’

  ‘Which window? Which?’ Pitman shook the man hard.

  ‘Th-there!’ the man whimpered. ‘Above the centre stair.’

  Pitman released him and moved faster than he had until now, feeling the strain in his newly knitted bone, pivoting off his great stick to relieve it. As he came under the window, something struck his shoulder and stuck there. Looking down, he saw that it was the gnawed leg of some bird and a fruit stone. He flicked them off and charged in.

  The stair was harder, though he managed it, and in just moments he stood between three doors. Then, from behind one of them, he heard a laugh. There was something nasty in it, so he pivoted on his staff and used his good leg to kick in the door.

  For a moment there was no movement in the room but the door flying in to crash against the wall – no sound but its smash. The five people just stared at him, united in shock. There was a flame-haired woman kneeling at a bed, a man seated before her. The woman was not Sarah. Another woman was lying on her side on a small table at either end of which stood a man – one older with an eye-patch, the other younger. Both had their fingers on the buttons of their breeches, and one apiece undone.

  It took Pitman a longer moment to recognise Sarah, for he had not seen her in a while, laid up as he’d been; and Bettina had not told him of her changes. But he doubted that even his wife would have recognised her instantly, what with her eyes so painted, her hair falling so about her.

  She gave a cry, rolled off the table and stepped into a corner, her back to the room. The older man cried too, differently. ‘Who the devil? Dog, how dare you? Burst in upon gentlemen, will ye?’

  The younger man, closer to Pitman and nearer his size, did not yell. He growled, a beast interrupted; he stooped, slipped a hand into his boot cuff and pulled out a knife.

  A blade always focused Pitman’s attention – especially thrust at him. Placing both hands on his stick, he slammed it sideways into the man’s wrist then smacked the top of the stout ash pole between the younger man’s eyes.

  He screeched, dropped the knife and fell to the floor. His father shouted, ‘Do you know who it is you cross here, wretch? By God, I’ll have you flogged –’

  Pitman brought the stick over in a great arc and slammed it on the table. ‘You are the ones who will be flogged,’ he roared. ‘For I am constable of this parish and I have caught you in the act of fornication!’

  It wasn’t his parish, and the rules against fornication were rarely enforced when the king was the acknowledged master fornicator of the realm. But Pitman’s size, his fury and the loud moaning of the younger man, together with the blood oozing between his clutched hands, cowed Eye-Patch’s fury. White of face, he went and helped his son rise, and then, pausing only to snatch up his purse, he hurried him from the room.

  ‘Wha-what do you mean by this, sir?’ The man on the bed’s anger was countered by his quavering voice. ‘These were my friends.’

  ‘Are you their mack? Their pander? Will you join them in the stocks?’ Pitman found that his fury had no bottom. Not while he could see Sarah turned away still in the corner, her shoulders shaking. He took several deep breaths and steadied himself. When he was sure his voice was calm, he took a step towards her and said, ‘Mrs Chalker?’ She didn’t move. ‘Will you come with me?’

  She turned suddenly. Snatching up her fallen dress, she passed him without looking up and exited the room.

  He followed her down the stairs and outside. ‘Mrs Coke,’ he called, cursing himself for always forgetting her change of names. Still she did not turn back, did not stop until she’d reached the corner of the small yard from whence there was nowhere else to go. There she froze, lifted the dress she carried and thrust her face into it.

  He reached out, but stopped his hand its own breadth from her back. ‘Mrs Chalk— Coke…Sarah. I –’

  He paused, uncertain what to say.

  Her voice came low. ‘So, Pitman, you arrived in the nick. Like something in a play. You have preserved my honour.’ She gave a humourless laugh. ‘And you may have doomed me – us.’ She broke off, pushing her face back into the dress.

  ‘It was the first time you –’

  He stopped. He so wished Bettina had been there. In situations like these, words were not his strength.

  It took a moment for her to speak again. ‘The first time, aye. But it will not be the last.’

  He looked up, searching for the right words. He saw faces there in the cloudless blue sky, as he sometimes did. ‘Necessity is a hard master, Sarah. It forces us to do things we know to be sins against God. Against man. In the late wars it forced me to kill. To steal. To –’

  He paused, and she spoke. ‘How do you live with that?’

  He sighed. ‘I had to make my peace with what was necessary.’

  She turned to him a little. ‘And did you succeed? Do you forget?’

  He looked down, away from the faces of dead men in the heavens. ‘Not always. Nor do I want to, entirely. For then, what will goad me to make myself better? I try to forgive my enemies.’

  ‘Forgive?’ She half-turned to him then. ‘Can you forgive me for what you saw up there?’

  ‘Did Jesus not say: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned; forgive, and you shall be forgiven.” ’ He nodded. ‘And remember I arrived, as you say, in the nick. You committed no sin.’

  She turned fully to him now. ‘This day. But I would have. I will. You have but delayed me. Cost me, sir! For necessity drives me still. This drives me.’ She laid her hand on her belly. ‘I would do anything so that my child survives. All that you did in war, and more besides.’

  He could not help his smile. It was partly for the return of the old Sarah he knew, not the one turned away, ashamed. The one facing him, determined and fierce; the one who, a year before, had loaded a gun with double ball and blown her husband’s murderer to hell. But his smile was also for what he could tell her now. ‘I cannot speak to all the future. We are each of us in God’s care. But for now I can remove “necessity” at least.’ He glanced at people coming close to listen. ‘Is there anywhere in this palace where we can converse in private? I have food here, which I fear these loiterers would snatch at,’ he tapped the satchel at his side, ‘and news also. I would give you both alone.’

  Her eyes brightened. ‘News of William Coke?’

  ‘Concerning him, aye.’

  She pointed behind her. ‘There’s a storeroom here. They call it “the hole”. If it is not occupied by a debtor under torment for some crime, the turnkeys will use it for,’ she flushed, ‘various things. But it is locked.’

  Pitman turned, saw it and called out, ‘Jenkins?’

  The gaoler approached, taking care to keep beyond Pitman’s long reach. ‘You found your, er, friend, then?’

  ‘I did. And I would like a private word with her.’ He pointed at the lock. ‘You have this key?’

  The meaning of the man’s smirk was obvious. ‘Oh, I have.’
He took out a bunch, selected one and inserted it. He pushed the door, beckoned to them to enter, then closed it behind them.

  The room was dim, its only light filtering in from a small window high up. A sunbeam came through it, amply lighting piles of boxes, clothes spilling out of them, bottles in others, firewood in stacks and falling directly onto other things.

  ‘You know what they are,’ she said, following his gaze.

  ‘I’ve seen ’em before,’ he replied, going to them, lifting the thumbscrews, the head vice, irons for ankles and neck, putting them out of sight behind the boxes.

  ‘You can hear the cries some nights. A debtor who’s offended a gaoler, or is hiding money.’

  ‘This is a terrible place indeed.’ Pitman reached into his satchel and withdrew things to place on the cleared box-top: a loaf of manchet, a block of ewe’s cheese, some nuts and oranges. Sarah began to eat. ‘And we must find ways of easing your time in it.’

  ‘But not getting me out?’ she said, through her crammed mouth.

  ‘Alas, the bounty that pays for this food does not run to forty guineas apiece for the builder and the Jew. But I had luck, and took a twenty-guinea thief on my first day afoot. With husbandry, Bettina reckons we can feed you at least, and perhaps get you better quarters for a rest.’ He produced a small purse. ‘This may pay for a room for a week or two and I will endeavour to get more now I am about.’

  ‘A room, even for a few days, would be luxury. But I will share it with Jenny and her daughter. She has saved me in here.’ She hesitated, then reached for an orange and began to peel it. ‘You said you had news of my husband?’

  ‘Not news exactly. But I have unravelled part of the mystery around his disappearance.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Captain Coke is innocent.’

  She paused in her eating and looked at him. ‘I know.’

  ‘You do? How –’

  ‘Because I have seen him.’ She tapped her head. ‘In here. In my dreams. I doubted for a while because I felt I did not know him well enough. But I do.’

  ‘It is good you have faith, Sarah. Because –’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He is the victim of a plot. The same terrible plot that sees you in this place.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You remember the girl he was, uh, caught with?’

  ‘It is unlikely I will ever forget her.’

  ‘Yes. Ahem. I believe I am a good judge of character, and this never did fit with Coke. Something always stank about it. But the girl vanished, as completely as the captain did. Her father was cut for the stone and was so ill for a time he looked like he would die. I could not question him.’

  Sarah finished the orange, reached for a second, then drew her hand back. ‘This must all be saved for little Mary,’ she murmured, then looked up. ‘Isaac lives?’

  ‘On the mend, I hear. And only yesterday his daughter returned in secret to see him.’

  ‘In secret?’

  ‘Aye. I do not think she intended to stay long, and she had relatives with her. I believe they plan to take her out of the country. But I’d set Josiah to watch and he brought me the word –’ He broke off. ‘To make swift report, I went and examined her. The relatives, her father, were reluctant to let me. But I can be,’ a little smile came, ‘forceful, or so my dearest chuck tells me.’ A frown returned. ‘The story is unpleasant, and reveals a damned conspiracy. Against the captain. Against you. And against the Jew too. It would have taken me in too, no doubt, if the conspirators had not thought me already dealt with by Captain Blood’s sword.’

  ‘Conspirators?’

  ‘Our old foes – the Fifth Monarchy men.’ Over her gasp, he continued, ‘This Blood is one and I have discovered that Tremlett, who you owe the debt to, is another. He denies any plot and I cannot touch him – yet. This flute-playing youth is also one of the damned crew, by the texts the girl said he quoted. He vanished, of course, to her great distress. She is young, and was much in love, I fear. I cannot find the seducer, but I will. But behind them all, there’s someone else, some…damned puppeteer who jerks all the strings. He is the orchestrator of this vengeance. I haven’t been able to pin him yet, but by God I will. I promise you that.’

  ‘And I promise you – these so-called Saints are not the only ones who know about vengeance. As they have already discovered.’ She reached for the satchel and started putting items back into it. ‘May I keep this?’

  ‘Indeed. There’s a fresh bottle of Bettina’s elixir in there too, for your strength – and for the babe’s.’

  She paused as she handled the bag of hazelnuts. ‘Dickon. No word of him either?’

  ‘Nay. Though I think we can guess that wherever the captain is, there he’ll be too. He’s a spaniel, truly. I never saw anyone so loyal.’

  ‘Except perhaps yourself?’ Sarah finished stuffing the bag. ‘But where might they be now? I know he was pressed.’

  Pitman exhaled loud. ‘A big battle was fought against the Dutch over four days in June. It was claimed as a great victory, though time proved that as false as dicers’ oaths. Many men were taken prisoner –’

  ‘Many killed?’

  ‘Aye. But I do not believe it of the captain. That man has survived worse, in war and in peace. Why, did he and I not rise from the plague pits of Moorfields, like lazars from the dead?’

  ‘I agree.’ She shook her head. ‘Alas, I inherited a poor fraction of the gifts my mother had as a seer. I cannot call a number on a dice table nor the winner in a cockfight. But I’ve always known when someone is dead. My William is not.’

  ‘So he’s either still at sea with the fleet, or in some Hogen prison on land.’ He grinned. ‘Trust me. He will return, Mrs Chalker.’

  ‘I do trust you, Pitman. Ever,’ she said, wiping her eyes and shouldering the satchel. ‘And that’s Coke to you – to all. Mrs Coke. I will be a wife again before I am a widow.’ She smiled. ‘For if you recall, the captain owes me a wedding night.’

  16

  BLOOD

  Terschelling, Holland, 9th August

  Keep your head down. He will not know me. He saw me but for a few moments, in the dark and over blades. Like the smiting angel he rants about, he will pass me by. But pray God, let it be soon. I am not sure how much more apocalypse I can take.

  Through his hands, resting on the pew before him and raised like many of the prisoners around him in an attitude of prayer, Coke risked a look. The man who had been haranguing them for half an hour from the pulpit of the small Dutch church showed no signs of flagging. The only hope that he might make an end of it soon was how the verses were coming more regularly, each delivered with ever-increasing fervour. Coke had suffered enough sermons in his life to recognise their shape – and to identify, too, a skilled preacher from a poor one. Captain Blood was one of the best.

  ‘ “These have the power to shut heaven,” ’ the Irishman cried, ‘ “that it rain not in the days of their prophecy; and have the power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.” ’

  Most of the English prisoners of war were sailors: practical men, who also were keeping their heads down. But there was a sizeable group of landsmen, pressed like Coke, their lives shattered by fate. These men, in the front two pews, had a different take on the words. These men yearned for certainties.

  ‘It has not rained in London these four months,’ cried one.

  ‘They say so many died in the four-day battle that the sea turned red,’ added another.

  ‘And all know how many were lost in the great plague last year,’ cried a third. ‘My father, my –’

  ‘Aye, brothers!’ Blood leaned over the pulpit now towards those who were swaying. ‘We know the inevitable. What we must know now is our part in it. For the Lord wants servants who will labour for him, even to their utmost, yeah, even to the end of days. To hasten His kingdom with righteous acts. This is what we must plan for now, against the day foretold, that is nigh upon us.’
He looked at them all, each in turn. ‘What are we to do?’

  ‘Fight?’

  ‘Aye, brother. Fight!’ Blood slapped the pulpit before him to halt the muttering that followed. ‘And that is why I have come to you. To offer you the chance to join the warriors of Christ in the waging of this holy war.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘There’s eighteen thousand veterans from the late civil wars already formed into regiments, many under their former commanders from the good old cause. Ready to come, with the Dutch ready to transport ’em.’ He raised both hands. ‘ “For thou art my battle axe and weapons of war; and with thee will I break in pieces the nations.” ’ He pointed at one man. ‘Will you be my battle axe?’ At another. ‘Will you join me and break in pieces Satan’s nation? Will you battle and conquer the Beast and prepare the way for King Jesus?’

  ‘Aye! Amen! King Jesus!’ The men in the front pews rose as one. ‘Praise him! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!’

  Blood now looked from those who praised to those who did not. Coke lowered his head again. It is done, he thought. Now, for mercy’s sake, let Christ’s recruiting officer move on to the next prison camp and leave me be.

  ‘Come, comrades!’ Blood’s voice rose again. ‘Our Dutch brethren in Jesus have laid out a feast for those who will join in this crusade. Come and partake.’

  Two soldiers now opened the chapel’s doors. Coke and the rest waited as the men from the front poured out. All had seen the tables covered with food – hams, sausages, fruits – rewards for the recruited. There was even beer, sore temptation for the sailors who had spent a dry time in Terschelling among the ever sober Dutch. But though Coke was as thirsty as any man there, he would bide – first here in the church as everyone else left, then in the barn that served as barracks. Later, he would go and work again in Gerrit van der Woude’s fields to earn the simpler fare that kept him and Dickon alive. He liked the old man and had got to know him better as the only prisoner of war who spoke some Dutch, learnt when he was in exile in Holland during the Protectorate. Perhaps Gerrit would share some jenever with him later if Greta was not about. It would be better than the sour Dutch beer.