The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘Where are you from?’ I said. ‘Who are you? And why are you—’

  She began to move away.

  ‘Stop – that’s my cloak.’

  I lunged at her hand and pulled her back. She raised my hand towards her lips. For one mad moment I thought she was about to kiss it. An expression of gratitude for saving her life.

  I glimpsed the whiteness of her teeth. She bit the back of my hand, just behind the lowest knuckle of the forefinger. The teeth dug deep and jarred against tendon and bone.

  I screamed and released her.

  She ran through the crowd on Ludgate Hill with my cloak floating about her shoulders. I stood there, watching her and nursing my hand. I was desperately thirsty. My head ached.

  During the Fire, I saw much that seemed against custom and nature, against reason and Divine ordinance, much that seemed to foreshadow still greater disasters yet to come. Monstra, as the scholars called such things, meaning wonders or prodigies or evil omens. The destruction of St Paul’s was one of them.

  But when I fell asleep that night, I did not dream of flames and falling buildings. I dreamed of the boy–woman’s face and the wide-open, unfocused eyes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ASHES AND BLOOD. Night after night.

  I was thinking of ashes and blood when I woke from a fitful sleep on the morning after the Fire reached St Paul’s. I knew by the light that it was early, not long after dawn.

  Not the hot ashes of the city last night. Not the blood from my hand, after the boy–girl had bitten me.

  This blood had been dripping from a head. As for the ashes, they had been cold. A weeping man had rubbed them into his hair.

  All this had given me nightmares when I was child, and for months I used to wake screaming, night after night. My mother, usually the mildest and most obedient of wives, had berated my father for allowing her son to see such things.

  ‘Will they do it to me one day?’ I had asked my mother. Night after night.

  Now, on a summer morning years later, I heard a ripple of song from a blackbird. The bed creaked as my father shifted his weight.

  ‘James?’ he said in the thin, dry voice of his old age. These days he slept badly and rose early, complaining of bad dreams. ‘James? Are you awake yet? Why’s it so hot? Let’s walk in the garden. It will be cooler there.’

  Even here, on the outskirts of Chelsea, the sky was grey with ash, the rising sun reduced to a smear of orange. The air was already warm. It smelled of cinders.

  After I had dressed, I removed the bandage from my left hand. The bleeding had stopped but the wound throbbed painfully. I rewrapped the bandage and helped my father down the narrow stairs, hoping we would not wake the Ralstons.

  We walked in the orchard, with my father leaning on my right arm. The trees were heavy with fruit – apples, pears and plums mainly, but also damsons, walnuts and a medlar. The dew was still on the grass.

  My father shuffled along. ‘Why is it so black?’

  ‘It’s the Fire, sir. All the smoke.’

  Frowning, he turned his face up to the sky. ‘But it’s snowing.’

  The wind had moderated a little overnight and had shifted from the east to the south. The air was full of dark flakes, fluttering and turning like drunken dancers.

  ‘Black snow,’ he said and, though the morning was already so warm, he shivered.

  ‘You grow fanciful, sir.’

  ‘It’s the end of the world, James. I told you it would be so. It is the wickedness of the court that has brought this upon us. It is written, and it must happen. This year is sixteen hundred and sixty-six. It is a sign.’

  ‘Hush, Father.’ I glanced over my shoulder. Even here, such talk was dangerous as well as foolish, especially for a man like my father whose liberty hung by a thread. ‘It isn’t snow. It’s only paper.’

  ‘Paper? Nonsense. Paper is white. Paper doesn’t fall from the air.’

  ‘It’s been burned. The stationers stored their paper and many of their books in the crypt at St Paul’s. But the Fire found a way to it, and now the wind brings these fragments even here.’

  ‘Snow,’ the old man muttered. ‘Black snow. It’s another sign.’

  ‘Paper, sir. Not snow.’ I heard the exasperation in my voice and wished I had said nothing. I sensed rather than saw the dismay in my father’s face, for signs of anger or irritation upset the old man, sometimes to the point of tears. I went on in a gentler voice, ‘Let me show you.’

  I stooped and picked up a fragment of charred paper, the corner of a page with a few printed words still visible on the scorched surface. I handed it to him.

  ‘See? Paper. Not snow.’

  My father took the paper and held it close to his eyes. His lips moved without sound. Even now he could read the smallest print by the dimmest rushlight.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ he said. ‘The end of the world. It’s another sign. Read it.’

  He held out the fragment to me. The paper had come from the bottom of a page, at the right-hand corner. There were five words visible on it, taken from the ends of two lines on the page:

  … Time is

  … it is done.

  ‘Well?’ He stretched out his arms to the black flakes swirling in the dark sky. ‘Am I not right, James? The end of the world is nigh, and Jesus will return to reign in majesty over us all. Are you prepared to face your God at His judgement seat?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ I said.

  Since May, my father and I had lodged in a cottage within the fenced enclosure of a market garden. We shared the house with the gardener, his wife and their maid. On fine days, the old man sat in the garden and shouted and waved his stick at marauding birds and small boys.

  Mistress Ralston, the gardener’s wife, was willing enough to take our money, and I made sure that our rent was paid on the nail. She complained about the extra work, though the maid did most of it, and she did not like having my father about the place during the day. She put up with us for the money. Of course, she said, if Master Marwood’s health worsened, that might be another matter. She and Master Ralston could not be expected to nurse the sick.

  I had chosen this place when my father was released on my surety, and for three reasons. The country air was healthier. The lodgings were cheap. And, most importantly, the garden was remote enough from London to reduce to insignificance the possibility that someone would recognize him; yet it was not too far for me to go daily to and from London.

  My father was a marked man. When the King had been restored, six years earlier, Parliament had passed an Act of Indemnity, which pardoned all who had fought against the Crown in the late insurrection. The only people excepted from this blanket pardon were the Regicides, those who had been directly instrumental in the execution of the King’s father at Whitehall.

  My father was covered by the Act, for he had not been named as a Regicide. But he had thrown away the King’s clemency after the Restoration, and by his own choice, and now we suffered the consequences. I loved my father, but sometimes I hated him too.

  My mother had hoped I would have a different life. It was she who had cajoled my father into enrolling me at St Paul’s School. She had dreamed that I might become a preacher or a lawyer, a man who worked with his mind and not his hands. But she had died a few years later. My father, whose business was declining, withdrew me from the school and bound me to him as his apprentice. Then came his last act of folly, after the Restoration, and he and I were entirely ruined.

  After breakfast, I told him I must go to Whitehall.

  ‘Ah, Whitehall,’ the old man said, his face brightening. ‘Where they killed the man of blood. Do you remember?’

  ‘Hush, sir. For God’s sake, hush.’

  But I did not go to Whitehall. Not at first.

  I had intended to walk there, but the road to Westminster, Whitehall and the City was choked with Londoners fleeing on foot and horseback, in coaches and wagons. With them they carried the elderly and sick; some of the latter
showed signs of the plague, which still lingered in the town.

  Others were encamped in fields and orchards along the roadside, erecting makeshift tents and shelters or merely sitting and weeping or staring vacantly towards the smoke of the Fire. Shock had made them numb.

  It would take me at least an extra hour, I calculated, to fight against the current of people and walk towards London. So I went down to the water and hailed a pair of oars to take me downriver. It was an expense I could ill afford but a necessary one.

  The Fire had been good to the watermen, for everyone wanted a craft of any sort to take them and their possessions to safety. They would pay the most inflated fares without a moment’s argument. Overladen craft, large and small, wallowed in the water. The Thames, even this far west, was as busy as Cheapside had been until the Fire had reached it.

  But, as with the road, the traffic tended to be away from London. I haggled with the boatman, reasoning that he would prefer to have a boat with a fare in it than one that was empty when he returned to collect more refugees and their possessions.

  We made good speed, with both the current and the tide on our side. The Thames was as grey as dirty pewter and littered with charred debris and discarded possessions, particularly furniture. I saw a handsome table, floating downstream, its legs in the air with a gull perched on one of them.

  As we neared Whitehall Stairs, I told the waterman not to pull in but to continue downstream as far as St Paul’s. I had a curiosity to see what was left of it. Part of me wondered if the boy–girl would return there, too. Something had drawn her toward the cathedral as the rats were fleeing from it, something so powerful that she had ignored the Fire.

  From the river, London was a horrifying sight. Above the town hung a great pall of smoke and ash. Beneath it, the air glowed a deep and sultry red. The sun could not break through, and the city was bathed in unnatural twilight.

  From Ludgate to the Tower there seemed nothing left but smouldering devastation. The close-packed houses, built mainly of wood, had melted away, leaving only fragments of blackened stone and brickwork. Even here on the water, with a stiff breeze blowing up the Thames, we felt the heat pulsing from the ruins.

  Every now and then the dull crump of an explosion boomed across the water. On the King’s orders, they were blowing up buildings in the path of the flames in the hope of creating firebreaks. There was an explosion somewhere between Fleet Street and the river.

  The waterman covered his ears and swore.

  ‘We can’t pull in, master,’ the waterman said, coughing. ‘God save us, you’ll fry if you go ashore.’

  A shower of cinders passed us, some clinging to my sleeve. I brushed them frantically away. ‘What about downstream?’

  ‘It’s the same all the way down – and hotter than ever – they say it’s the oil burning in the warehouses.’

  Without waiting for my order, he pulled away from the north bank and rowed us out to midstream. I stared at St Paul’s. It was still standing, but the roof had gone, and both walls and tower had a jagged, shimmering quality, like outlines seen under flowing water. Columns of smoke rose from still-burning fires within the blackened shell. It wasn’t a church any more. It was more like a giant coal in an oven.

  It was impossible that the boy–girl could be within twenty yards of it or more. No living creature could survive that heat.

  ‘Whitehall,’ I said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE PALACE OF Whitehall sprawled along the river to the south of Charing Cross. It was a warren of buildings, old and new, covering more than twenty acres. It had a population larger than that of most villages.

  There was no panic here, but there were signs of unusual activity. In the Great Court, workmen were loading wagons with goods, which would be removed to the safety of Windsor if the Fire spread further west.

  I enquired after my patron, and learned that he was in his private office in Scotland Yard, an adjacent complex of buildings which lay on the northern side of the palace. Master Williamson also worked in far grander lodgings overlooking the Privy Garden; but when his business was shabby and private he walked across to Scotland Yard and conducted it in the appropriate surroundings.

  Williamson was engaged, so I was forced to kick my heels in the outer office used by clerks and messengers. One of the clerks was making a fair copy of a report on the Fire for the London Gazette. Among his other responsibilities, Williamson edited the newspaper and ensured that its contents were as agreeable as possible to the government.

  He himself ushered out his visitor, a portly, middle-aged gentleman with a wart on the left-hand side of his chin. The stranger’s eyes lingered on me for a moment as he passed by.

  Williamson, still wreathed in smiles, beckoned me. ‘At last,’ he said, the good humour dropping like a falling curtain from his face. ‘Why didn’t you wait on me yesterday evening?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. The Fire delayed me and—’

  ‘Nevertheless, you should have come. And why the devil are you so late this morning?’

  Williamson’s Cumbrian accent had become more pronounced. Though he had lived in the south, and among gentlemen in the main, for nearly twenty years, his native vowels broadened when he was irritated or under pressure.

  ‘The refugees blocked the road, sir.’

  ‘Then you should have started earlier. I needed you here.’ He waved at the clerk who was working on the report for the Gazette. ‘That idiot cannot write a fair hand.’

  ‘Your pardon, sir.’

  ‘You’ve not been in my employ for long, Marwood,’ he went on. ‘Don’t keep me waiting again, or you will find that I shall contrive to manage without you.’

  I bowed and kept silent. Without Williamson’s patronage I would have nothing. And my father would have worse than nothing. Williamson was under-secretary to Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State for the South, and his influence spread throughout the government and far beyond. As for me, I was the least important of Williamson’s clerks, little more than his errand boy.

  ‘Come in here.’

  He led the way into his private office. He said nothing more until I had shut the door.

  ‘Did you go to St Paul’s last night as I commanded?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I was there when the crypt went up. The cathedral was beyond rescue within an hour, even if they could have got water to it. The heat was terrible. By the time I left, molten lead was trickling down Ludgate Hill.’

  ‘Was anyone inside?’

  I thought of the boy–girl running towards the building when the Fire was at its hottest. I said, ‘Not as far as I know, sir. Even the rats were running away.’

  ‘And what were the people in the crowd saying?’

  ‘About the cause of the Fire?’

  ‘In particular about the destruction of the cathedral. They say it has angered the King as much as anything these last few days, even the damned Dutch.’

  I swallowed. ‘They attribute it to one of two things, sometimes both. The—’

  ‘Don’t talk in riddles.’

  ‘I mean, sir, that they say the two causes may be linked. For some say God is showing his displeasure at the wickedness of the court’ – better not to blame our profligate and Papist-leaning King in person, for walls had ears, especially in Whitehall – ‘while others attribute the Fire to the malignancy of our enemies. To the Pope or the French or the Dutch.’

  ‘It won’t do,’ Williamson said sharply. ‘Do you hear me? The King says it was an accident, pure and simple. The hot, dry summer. The buildings huddled together and dry as kindling. The east wind. An unlucky spark.’

  I said nothing, though I thought the King was probably right.

  ‘Any other explanation must be discouraged.’

  The King’s ministers, I thought, were between a rock and a hard place. Either they had merited God’s displeasure through their wickedness or they were so ineffectual that they could not prevent the country’s enemies from striking such a mortal
blow at the heart of the kingdom. Either way, the people would blame the Fire on them and on the King and his court. Either way, the panic and disaffection would spread. Better to change the subject.

  ‘Master Maycock, sir, the printer,’ I said. ‘I saw him yesterday evening at St Paul’s. He was like a man possessed – he had his goods stored in the crypt, and they went up with the rest in the Fire.’

  Williamson almost smiled. ‘How very distressing.’

  There were only two licensed newspapers in the country, for the government permitted no others. Maycock was responsible for printing Current Intelligence, which was the upstart rival to the London Gazette, the newspaper that Master Williamson ran.

  ‘If only Maycock had done as Newcomb did, and moved his goods out of the City,’ Williamson said with a touch of smugness. Newcomb was Williamson’s printer.

  ‘Newcomb’s lost his house, though,’ I said. ‘It was by Baynard’s Castle, and that’s gone.’

  ‘I know,’ Williamson said in his flat, hard voice. ‘I already have it in hand. I have in mind some premises in the Savoy for him, if all goes well. If God wills it, the next Gazette will be Monday’s. We shall lose an issue but at least that means we shall not be able to publish the City’s Bill of Mortality this week. People will understand that – there’s more important work to do than waste time compiling lists of figures. Besides, I’m told that the death count has been remarkably low. God be thanked.’

  I understood Williamson perfectly, or rather I understood what he did not say. There might well have been dozens of deaths, perhaps hundreds, in the areas where the unrecorded poor huddled together near the river, near the warehouses of oil and pitch that burned as hot as hellfire. The Fire had broken out there early on Sunday morning, when half of them would have been in a drunken stupor. Others had died, or would die, from the delayed effects of the Fire – because they were already ill, or old, or very young, and the distress of fleeing from their homes would destroy them.