Fire

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘Well,’ the woman said, falling back to sit. ‘You’re this close,’ she said, holding up two glistening fingers, ‘so you’re not that close. How often the pains coming?’

  ‘Near all the time,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Truly? Hmm.’ She scratched at a mole upon her face. ‘It’s cos your waters haven’t burst. But I can fix that.’ She reached within her cloak, fumbled around, finally pulling out a slim, black stick about half a foot long. It had a hook on one end. ‘Usually I use this to grab the babe and ’ook ’im out.’ She grinned, stabbing the probe down. ‘But I can use it to break your bag as well.’ Sarah shivered and the woman shrugged. ‘If you don’t like that, though, I’ve a coin with sharp edge. It’s a milled sixpence from the reign of Good Queen Bess. Her virginity must bless it cos I’ve delivered ever so many with its aid.’

  She laughed again. Sarah was about to protest, but then the woman sat back rather than reaching. ‘I’ll do either,’ she continued, ‘after we’ve discussed payment.’

  ‘You’ll get paid,’ Jenny said. ‘Just do it, will ya?’

  ‘Ahead of time,’ the midwife replied. ‘Afterwards women tend to forget. If’n they’re in a state to remember.’ She held out a grimy hand. ‘One crown.’

  ‘So much?’ Sarah said faintly.

  ‘Course! I’ve got some drugs for you too, ease the pain. They cost as well.’

  ‘I’ve only got a half-crown. More later.’

  ‘More now.’ When Sarah shook her head, the midwife shrugged and began to rise.

  ‘Wait!’ said Jenny. She went to the door, opened it, looked about. ‘Jenkins!’ she called loudly. ‘Come ’ere, love. I want to talk to ya.’

  ‘No, Jenny–’

  ‘Hush now,’ said her friend, turning back. ‘It’s only Jenkins. Be over in a blink.’

  The turnkey came over. Jenny closed the door on their hushed conversation and Sarah heard them walking away. The pain doubled again. ‘Can you –?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll just bide if you don’t mind.’ The midwife chuckled, then reached again within her shawl, pulling out a flask. ‘Drink?’ she said. At Sarah’s shake of the head, she shrugged and drank deep.

  Successive waves of pain took her, seeming to be getting ever closer together, until they merged into one constant agony. Her eyes were closed against it, her hands across her belly and the movement there. ‘Come.’ She sent down the thought through her fingertips. ‘Pity me and come.’

  She wasn’t sure how long had passed before the door opened again. Not long, perhaps, for the woman still had the flask in her hand.

  Jenny entered. ‘Told ya,’ she said, smoothing down her dress as she crossed to the straw, ‘ ’Ere ya go.’ She handed her coin to the midwife, reached into Sarah’s discarded smock and matched silver to silver. ‘Now get on with it.’

  ‘All in good time,’ replied the other, secreting the half-crowns within her clothes, then pulling out a little glass bottle. ‘Have a swig of this, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘It’ll take all your pains and troubles away.’

  As agony surged through her again, Sarah took it, then hesitated. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh, a very special concoction of my own devising.’

  Jenny bent to sniff, wrinkling her nose. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘This and that.’ She gestured to the flask impatiently. ‘Just get it down, will ya?’

  Again Sarah raised it to her lips. Again she hesitated. ‘What “this”? What “that”?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, for Jesu’s sake!’ The woman raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘It’s mainly, you know, the sleeping poppy.’

  Sarah frowned, but it was Jenny who spoke. ‘Opium? But that’ll make her drowsy. She needs to be awake to push. I remember with my Mary –’

  ‘She’ll be awake,’ interrupted the woman, tetchy now, ‘and she’ll push. Enough for me to get a grip.’ She raised her stick and tapped the little flask. ‘Get on, now. There’s plenty of others out there who need my services.’

  A sudden sharp agony came, greater than any before. Sarah screamed, dropped the flask, to the midwife’s loud yelp – but Sarah barely heard her. Through the pain she suddenly remembered another birth she’d attended, one where she’d been the helper – Lucy Absolute’s delivery the year before. Lucy had died soon after – not from the childbirth but from the plague that had ravaged the city and killed so many. But what she recalled clearly was her friend, not lying down but squatting with her back against the wall. ‘Help me up,’ she yelled, and Jenny – big, strong Jenny – reached under her arms, hoisted her and held her against the wall.

  ‘But your waters haven’t broken,’ the midwife cried. ‘Let me –’ She reached again with her hooked stick – and Sarah slapped it from her hands. ‘Get away,’ she shrieked. ‘Keep her away from me, Jenny! I swear I’ll…ahhh!’

  Time dissolved, lost to torment. Sometimes she knew she was up and squatting, Jenny supporting her and yelling encouragement. At others she was on her back again, or her side, the pain excruciating and she was screaming to drown out anyone else’s counsel. It was half-dream, other women’s faces coming, other voices shouting commands, whispering reassurance – her mother’s, Lucy’s. Then the men came too, where men should never be – Betterton, telling her she was too fat to perform; Pitman, driving off men who would harm her; her husband, her first husband, John Chalker, shaking his full and curly black locks in that way he did, laughing his great, deep laugh; lastly, longer, her captain was there – her William. Telling her to live for him, begging her to await his return, vowing he would be there soon.

  A bell shook her, and she opened her eyes. It was the deep toll of nearby St Christopher le Stocks. That deeply religious harlot, Jenny Johnson, had told her all the tales of the nearby churches and the saints they were named for, crossing herself in true papist style as she gave thanks to each one. Christopher was the patron saint of many things, most notably of travellers – and of sailors. Was not her William a sailor now?

  The ninth, the final stroke came, and almost upon it came the sailor’s child, her child. The head appeared, or so Jenny said, shouting for more. With what she felt would be the last of her strength, she heaved again, felt a terrible burning down there, like the fire that raged on the riverside laid between her legs. Then that passed, and with a last mighty scream the babe passed, and Jenny let her go to catch it. Slipping down the wall, Sarah let more tears fall.

  Somehow, through the sobs, she heard the voice. ‘Poor thing,’ the midwife was saying. ‘Poor mite. It happens. But I told ya – if you’d only let me reach in with my little hook –’

  Sarah opened her eyes. She’d fallen on her side but she sat up now. Jenny was holding a red and wrinkled thing, slick with blood. It was not human, because it had no face, just skin where the face should be. ‘I’m sorry,’ Jenny said. She was weeping too, holding the thing – her babe, a boy, she could see that on the instant – up to her.

  As the pain in her body receded, her mind came suddenly, completely clear. ‘Oh no,’ Sarah said, but not in distress as she sat up and peeled the skin from the baby’s face.

  There was a moment of complete silence within the cell, beyond it, as if all the world went still. And then the baby opened its mouth and yelled; and in that first cry, in that glorious first cry, Sarah heard, unmistakably, that most rare, most wonderful thing – William Coke’s laugh. And she knew their child on the instant.

  —

  Coldharbour, near London Bridge. 9 a.m.

  No toll called the hour from the tower of St Magnus the Martyr. The flames that had run parallel down Pudding Lane and Fish Street Hill had united to ravage the church. Plenty of other bells sounded nearby, though none counted the clock – for their peals were sounded backwards.

  The inhabitants of the Coldharbour sanctuary poured towards the docks. From the cramped laneways – Red Cross Alley, Flower de Luce Alley, Ebgate – they came, drawn by the strange peal of those bells, driven by the smoke that was thickening every mi
nute, choking them in their tenements, clutching the few things they were able to save.

  A hefty porter came with a harpsichord on his back; a youth with a bookshelf hoisted, stuffed with thick leather volumes. Others brought lesser things, valuable to them – a crate with a single canary; hessian sacks that clanked with plate; an armchair with straw spilling from its split cushions, perched atop a head. Most just carried babes, or small children, or old men and women. Everyone shouted at the boatmen.

  ‘Take me!’

  ‘No, me. I saw him first.’

  ‘Take my daughter!’

  ‘Five shillings.’

  ‘But that’s double the fare!’

  ‘I’ll give you seven!’

  Two more boats swept into the dock, the wherrymen grabbing wood and shouting, ‘Eight shillings to Southwark. Eight!’

  ‘Order here, good citizens! Order!’

  Members of the watch cried out, trying to control the crowd with staves. They might as well have used them to keep off rain.

  ‘Look at the sinners scramble – as if they could escape judgment.’ Simeon Critchollow turned. ‘Say it, Daniel. The words I had thee learn.’

  The younger man took a deep breath. ‘ “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” ’

  ‘The lake of fire.’ As he repeated the words, Simeon looked again towards the columns of smoke spiralling up from the city and to the flames, a shimmering line now running from east of the bridge, one hundred yards to the west of it, and as far north. ‘But who is in the book of life? What of our brothers, soon to be resurrected?’

  They turned to the bridge, the reason they’d come to this viewpoint. Another fire, decades before, had destroyed much of the northern end. There was still a gap and the flames, having nothing to feed on and fought by householders further along the structure, who beat them back with boot, broom and bucket, had been stayed. Southwark, a suburb even more sinful than Coldharbour, had been spared. For now.

  Simeon’s sight was ever keen and despite the smoke he could still see the gatehouse at the southern end. See the four heads among the many staked upon it. Two were skulls, long since picked clean by crows; the third, hoisted up six months before, had little flesh left about it either. But he, who had been to revere them several times, could tell each from each from their position among the dozens.

  ‘Pray with me, Daniel,’ he said, keeping his eyes upon those three. ‘Pray for our martyrs impaled there. You know our rallying cry: “King Jesus and the heads upon the bridge.” Pray for their remains now. That they are not burned. That their skulls will be fleshed again, their mouths oped to greet their returning souls at the last trumpet, which soundeth soon.’ He lifted his hands, palms up to the side, his eyes to the darkening sky. ‘Lord, we beseech you to hold close our brothers – Thomas Venner, General Harrison, Colonel Rathbone, sacrificed in your righteous cause,’ he intoned.

  ‘Rise again! Amen!’

  But it was the fourth skull that mattered to him most. ‘And I beseech you to remember most particularly your brightest blade, Lord Garnthorpe. May he rise to wield it again in your cause.’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘For are their names not written in the book of life? Proven so by this, their sacrifice? All for this time, now. For this day of judgment, come. Amen.’

  This last was declaimed loudly, with finality. Daniel echoed it. ‘And what do we do now, Brother Simeon?’

  The puppeteer smiled. ‘Do? We must be about it – fuel, guns, powder. Follow the example of these our martyrs who did not wait but forever strove.’

  A surge of people jostled them, pushing and screaming for the few boats. Someone fell in the river to more screams. The watchmen yelled in vain and Simeon looked again at them. ‘Witness how all authority yields now to God’s. And yet, man will always oppose His will.’ He nodded. ‘You know who this will draw to the city? One who ever seeks to court the people’s love?’

  ‘The king?’

  ‘Aye. Perhaps his brother too. They make such show of care. How could they resist this chance of proving it again?’ He dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. ‘The Fourth Monarchy staggers to destruction. But it will need a final push. So we will need Captain Blood.’

  ‘Is he returned?’

  ‘You think he would miss this? He knew this date as well as we, remember.’ He smiled. ‘Do you go and hang a blanket in the Bell Inn’s window. He will know by that to come to our meeting house hard by All Hallows the More, where all saints will rally.’

  Even in the little time they’d stood on the docks, everything had intensified: the smoke, the heat, the lamentations. Daniel coughed. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I am confused. Did not the prophecies foretell that September the third was the day of judgment? Today is the second.’

  Simeon stared at him for a long moment – then burst out laughing. ‘You think that the Almighty is bound…by a day? That all the prophets – Master Lilly, Anna Trapnel, Mother Shipton – are so scrupulous they could not err by so few hours?’ He stepped closer, laughter gone, his eyes dancing with reflected light as he looked up once more. ‘This fire is but the forerunner, as the baptiser John was to Christ. This is the first spark, merely. By tomorrow there may be something even greater: the death of kings. So let us be about it.’ As he strode away, pushing through the panicked crowd, he yelled, ‘Fuel, guns and powder. And Captain Blood.’

  —

  St Mary-le-Bow churchyard. Noon.

  Clamping his hat to his skull so he did not lose it to the still-raging wind, Pitman surveyed what the church vaults had disgorged. He was not pleased.

  This comes of taking the position of headborough without a proper handover, he thought. What annoyed him most was that it was at least partly his own fault. He had been in the post mere weeks when he’d been hurt by that devilish Irishman. And when he’d recovered enough from that, so much other parish business had built up to be dealt with that some things had been neglected. St Mary-le-Bow’s arsenal for fire-fighting was one of them.

  Such as there was, his men had spread out on the paths of the churchyard. Only two fire poles: one twenty feet, one thirty feet in length, with iron hooks at their ends, and ropes down the side for the pulling down of houses in a fire’s path – if the houses had rings in their end beams to hook onto, which was not always the case. There were a mere dozen leathern buckets, and they would not make a very long chain from well to flame. They were better served with axes and ladders, having a dozen of the one, two-threes of the other. But the two brass fire squirts that men would fill with water and shoot over the flames looked as if they had survived from the first James’s reign, and had been a habitation for mice ever since. He’d ordered them cleaned out but…

  He sighed. He’d hoped to take half of his equipment to go and aid in the fight on the river. Now he thought he’d better take only himself and the half dozen constables he’d managed to rouse from slumber or chapel. ‘Bring a bucket and an axe apiece, lads,’ he commanded, ‘and follow me.’

  As he grabbed one of each, his hat, unencumbered, flew from his head and out of the churchyard. He did not give chase but went the opposite way. He was aware of the grumbling behind him, but the whistling of the wind drowned the words – though he knew what they’d be saying. That it was some distant parish’s problem, at least a quarter of a mile away. That it was only old Coldharbour liberty that burned – so they’d been dragged from church to save the homes of some of the city’s greatest sinners. All on their day off too.

  He did not feel that way. It is my fellow citizens suffering, howsoever fallen, he thought, as he led his men down Bow Row and onto the Watling Street, my fellow Christians. Charity must be offered, as Jesus taught. He had special reason to give thanks with good works on this, the Lord’s day. He had a new son, swaddled up with his mother back at home. Cooing, his mother said, not crying.

  It was w
hen he stood at the crossroads with Walbrook and could see along Cannon Street that his smile vanished. The lane was a chaos of carts being pushed by hand and dragged along by horses, with men and women burdened like pack beasts. Smoke was gushing out of the lanes running up from the south, as if each were a chimney funnelling a most ferocious hearth. As he led his men into the mayhem, more and more people kept stumbling from each one, clutching each other and their few meagre possessions. ‘You there,’ he called to a man newly emerged, who was slapping the back of a woman sitting on the ground, ‘where’s the fire reached?’

  The man coughed, spat and drew breath. ‘It’s burned through the liberty,’ he wheezed. ‘Fishmongers’ Hall, Dyers’ Hall, both gone.’ Over the astonished cries of some of the constables, he continued, ‘Some men are trying to stop it at Thames Street.’ He doubled over, hacking again, then looked up blearily. ‘Not many. Most are just running.’

  ‘Why did you not go upon the water, fellow?’ asked another constable.

  ‘Take me for a fool? Or a money-bags?’ The man emptied his nostrils to the side. ‘Bastard boatmen are charging a pound a trip now. But they won’t have business for long cos the wharves are all ablaze too.’ He helped the woman up from the cobbles and they staggered off.

  ‘Onwards,’ said Pitman. If Thames Street is breached, he thought, this is a riverside fire no more.

  Through the smoke ahead he saw men a-saddle. Striding closer, weaving between carts and drays, he recognised one of them. He’d seen him earlier that morning. Pitman thought of asking him now if he still believed a woman could piss this fire out. However, the Lord Mayor did not look like a man who would find the question amusing.

  ‘I have been pulling down houses, sir. When I can,’ Bludworth said, his voice shrill. ‘But, God preserve me, people will not obey me, and householders threaten me – with law suits, with violence.’ He dabbed the sweat on his brow with a large handkerchief. ‘What more would the king have me do?’