The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

‘Leave it. Master Hakesby wants you. Are your wits on holiday?’

  Cat straightened her cuffs and went upstairs. She was wary – she had had no conversation with Master Hakesby since she had fled from Convocation House Yard two days before. She knocked on the door of his chamber and was told to enter.

  He was standing by the window, little more than a tall, stooping shadow because of the sunlight behind him. Beside him was Dr Wren. Cat dropped a curtsy to the space between the two men. Neither of them paid her any attention.

  ‘I must have the new measurements by this afternoon,’ Dr Wren said. ‘I’m quite determined to do this at least as it should be done. The King wants it too, I know.’

  ‘Will you speak to him about the rest, sir?’ Master Hakesby said. ‘About the city?’

  ‘I’ll try. I doubt it will do any good though. That was clear enough when we met the gentlemen from the Privy Council and the Common Council.’ Wren’s face was pale and tired. He spoke with cold deliberation, as if the words were painful and needed careful extraction. ‘However much the King desires a new London, he hasn’t the money, and nor has the City; and I don’t believe the City has the will for it, either. All they want to do is make money. No surprise in that – all I had from Alderley the other day were fine words. As long as he gets his interest on his loans he could not care a straw. They are all the same. They look to their profits, and they cannot see much further than the end of the next quarter.’

  ‘But the Custom House, sir,’ Master Hakesby put in, frowning. ‘There’s no difficulty there?’

  ‘I hope not, if we play our cards right. After all, it is a symbol of the royal power in the heart of the City, and the King is alive to the importance of that. But we cannot delay drawing up the design, for he may change his mind. I must take the revised plans to Whitehall after dinner, so pray make the calculations as soon as possible and transfer them to the fair copy. Could you do it here? I’m sure the girl will bring you what you need. I’ll call for them on my way this afternoon.’

  Hakesby bowed.

  ‘When you send the girl out,’ Wren went on, ‘would you ask her to get more sand, too? My shaker is empty, and I smudged a letter I wrote last night most barbarously. Who has your business?’

  ‘Finching’s, by Temple Bar.’

  Wren took up his stick. ‘And black-lead for the pencil.’ For the first time he looked directly at Cat. ‘Make sure you keep the paper clean and dry on the way back. Take particular care not to crumple or mark it in any way.’

  She curtsied, keeping her eyes down.

  ‘Are you sure she’ll do?’ Wren said. ‘She looks barely more than a child.’

  ‘Jane is older than she looks, sir. Quick in apprehension, reliable, and also most deft in her movements.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Hakesby and Cat listened in silence to Dr Wren clattering down the stairs. They heard two voices rising and falling below, his and Mistress Noxon’s, and then the bang of the front door.

  ‘Why did you run off the other day?’ Hakesby said.

  ‘Your pardon, sir.’ The lie came smoothly. ‘I was wanted here. Mistress Noxon said I was not to dally at St Paul’s.’

  ‘If I were less addlepated, I should have brought your cloak home with me today. You left it in Convocation House Yard. Another day. Now, as to the paper, it’s for fine work, and we shall need two quires of it. Take this spoiled sheet and show it to the stationer. The size and quality must be precisely the same.’

  She took the sheet. She noticed how his fingers trembled so much that the paper wavered in the air.

  The day that followed was happier than any Cat could remember in the weary years since she had left her great-aunt’s house in Champney and come to live with the Alderleys.

  When Cat returned from the stationer’s, she found Hakesby bent over the long table which stood at right angles to one of the tall windows. He was working on a set of figures. His left hand rested on his right hand, steadying it. She did not dare ask what was wrong with him. Perhaps he was unduly attached to spirits, though she had seen no bottles about his chamber. But one of Uncle Alderley’s clerks had been so afflicted and, according to Edward, had died raving in the back yard of an alehouse.

  He looked up and asked her to show him her purchases.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Can you make ink?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then you shall make me some now. Enough to fill that jar.’

  He pointed at another table in the corner of the room. Beside the empty jar were oak-galls, copperas and gum arabic.

  ‘Use the rainwater in that pot. It’s purer and flows better.’

  She set to work, absorbed and happy, and went to and fro between Master Hakesby’s parlour and the kitchen, gathering what she needed for the work. There was already ink on the table by the window. She wondered if he were testing her.

  Hakesby continued with his figures. After half an hour, he came over and inspected her progress. The making of ink was not something you did in five minutes.

  ‘Leave that for a moment. I shall try an experiment with you, and we shall see how you do. You told me the other day that you can read and write.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He took a book from a shelf, opened it at the title page and set it on the table. He pointed at the title. ‘Then what does this say?’

  She bent over it. ‘I quattro libri dell’architettura di Andrea Palladio.’ She stumbled over the unfamiliar words but pressed on, syllable by syllable. ‘Ne’ quali, dopo un breve trattato de’ cinque ordini, & di quelli avertimenti, che—’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Your pardon, sir, I do not know Italian, and—’

  ‘But you know it is Italian, and that is something I did not expect. Now we shall try another experiment.’

  He took up the sheet of spoiled paper she had taken as a sample to the stationer’s and told her to mark out lines of varying lengths in black-lead with the help of a ruler, taking care that the line should be as fine and faint as possible.

  Cat sat at the table in the window, with the paper resting on the slope that Master Hakesby used. As she worked, she was aware of him moving about the room, inspecting the progress of her ink manufacture, consulting a memorandum book, and tugging at his long fingers as if they pained him.

  He must have been watching her for, when she had finished, he was at her shoulder immediately.

  ‘Good. Now take up that pen – no, not that one, the one there with the finer point to it. It needs trimming. When you’ve done that, ink in the lines.’

  This took much longer. There was no room for error. She finished the task at last, but not entirely to her satisfaction.

  ‘A slight blot to the end there,’ Master Hakesby said, ‘and that line below is not quite as regular as I would like – but otherwise well enough. Now write beside it with the same nib, and in letters as small and neat and delicate as you can, the words: Christopher Wren delineavit.’

  Cat looked sharply at him. ‘I don’t understand, sir.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Do it.’

  The words crept across the paper.

  ‘Good. A clerkly hand. Where did you learn these skills?’

  ‘When I was young, I served an old lady who lived in the country.’ The lie came fluently, because Cat had prepared it while she was working. ‘My mistress taught me, and I helped her, especially when her eyes began to fail. She had travelled in Italy when she was younger, and she had an interest in all this.’ She gestured at the plans on the table. ‘Then she died, and I came up to London.’

  In a sense, the story was true enough, as stories went, though not the whole truth; the lady had been Cat’s Great Aunt Eyre. Before her death, she had given Cat the box of drawing instruments. They were of Italian manufacture, the box inlaid with ivory.

  ‘She taught you well. So today you will help me a little more.’ Hakesby’s fingers fluttered. ‘With this.’

  Master Hakesby was working on a
design for the Customs House on the Thames. The old building, more than a hundred years old, had been gutted in the Fire. The plans were almost complete, but the previous day Dr Wren had introduced refinements to the all-important south elevation overlooking the Thames, which necessitated the making of a fine copy of that portion of the plan, together with the insertion of the revised calculation of measurements affecting the whole structure.

  Speed was everything, Hakesby told her, for the King would soon be inundated with designs for new buildings; and he who was first in line was in the best position possible, particularly if his face was known and liked at court, as Dr Wren’s was. Indeed, the King had promised as much. On the other hand, in Master Hakesby’s experience, the promises of kings were not always to be relied on.

  The design was ready when Dr Wren returned after dinner. He cast an eye over it, while Hakesby stood beside him. Cat was still in the room, waiting to be dismissed.

  ‘This hand isn’t yours, Master Hakesby.’

  ‘It’s the maid’s.’

  ‘What?’ Wren stared at Cat. ‘The girl did this? This one?’

  ‘Jane writes a fair hand. Better than mine today, since my ague has come on again.’

  For the first time, the Doctor seemed to see Cat clearly. He was a handsome man, she supposed, with particularly fine eyes. He turned back to Hakesby. ‘The work will do. It will do very well. We shall give her sixpence for her trouble.’

  Dr Wren’s words fell into the deep pool of memory. For an instant, up from its dark depths, came other words and the gleam of another sixpence. And with them, conjured from a place beyond death, came Great-Aunt Eyre herself at Coldridge, the house in Suffolk.

  ‘You have done well, child,’ Aunt Eyre said, peering at the paper in her hand, for she was growing short-sighted. ‘It is very prettily drawn, and you have an arch that is most like Domitian’s in Rome, erected to his brother Titus. Here’s a silver sixpence. Mind you guard it well.’

  When Cat came down from Master Hakesby’s chamber, she found Margery in the scullery, clearing up after dinner. The other maid gave her a look of barely concealed dislike.

  ‘Mistress is in her room,’ she said, tossing her head. ‘She wants you.’

  Judging by the redness of her eyes, Mistress Noxon had been crying. By the time Cat came to her, the tears were dry and sorrow had given way to truculence.

  ‘I’ve had a letter,’ she announced. ‘From a man called Mundy, at Barnabas Place. Calls himself Alderley’s steward. Sounds as stiff as a broom handle but much less useful.’

  Cat could not speak. Her happiness was sponged away. Fear made it hard to breathe. She could not escape the Alderleys – first at St Paul’s and now this.

  Mistress Noxon’s voice seemed to be coming from far away. ‘The letter was sent to my old house in Oxford, and then sent on here. It’s about my Uncle Jem’s box. They want it collected.’

  ‘So they don’t know I’m here?’ Cat whispered.

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea, you foolish girl? This fellow Mundy says I have to collect it, otherwise it’ll go on the bonfire. I’m sure there’ll be nothing in it worth the having. John will have to take a handcart. It’s the waste of at least half a day for him, which is so vexing.’

  Cat began to tremble, and she steadied herself against the kitchen table. ‘Will they learn that you live in London?’

  Mistress Noxon shook her head. ‘Not if John tells them he’s to take the box to the Oxford carrier.’

  ‘Pray God there’s no difficulty.’

  Mistress Noxon’s face became very red. ‘You forget yourself, Jane. Why should there be a difficulty? Anyway, it’s no concern of yours. He was my uncle, was he not? Now tell me this – what have you been doing upstairs all day?’

  ‘Helping Master Hakesby.’

  ‘It won’t do, do you hear me? Doing what, pray?’

  ‘He sent me out on a commission—’

  ‘I know that!’

  ‘And I made ink for him, mistress, and I did some drawing.’

  Mistress Noxon snorted. ‘If Master Hakesby wants you to work for him, then he must pay for you. And mark this, Jane, I’ll have no lewd behaviour in my house. Go and help Margery. You’ve been idling about all day, and it’s spoiled you for your proper work.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THEY FOUND THE second body six weeks after the first, early in the morning of 18 October.

  The first I knew of it was when Williamson arrived at the Scotland Yard office and called me into his room. He told me to shut the door. I knew from his voice that he was in a bad temper.

  ‘Body in the Fleet Ditch,’ he said to me without preamble. ‘Take a barge and go and fetch it. The officer who reported it will go with you – Lieutenant Thurloe. He’ll give you any details you need on the way. Take a pen and I’ll dictate a warrant for you.’

  ‘Has he been murdered, sir?’

  Williamson ignored the question. Either he had taken too much wine last night or, more probably, he had had the rough side of someone’s tongue this morning. ‘Bring it back and have them put it where the other one was. That servant of Alderley’s.’

  ‘And what about the copy for the Gazette? Shall—’

  ‘Just do as I say, will you? Or find another master. It’s all one to me.’

  Half an hour later, I walked down the stairs from the office with Williamson’s warrant, signed and sealed, in my pocket. At the half-landing I met a gentleman on his way up. I stepped aside to allow him to pass me.

  The newcomer was huffing and puffing, his face red with exertion. He glanced at me with irritation in his face, as if I shouldn’t have blundered into his path. I recognized him. It was the gentleman with the wart on his chin.

  The first time I had seen him he had been coming out of Williamson’s office the day St Paul’s was burned. The second time was on the following day, just after they had brought Layne’s body to Whitehall.

  Here he was again. And here was another body.

  Thurloe was small and square-built, with the scar of a sword wound on his cheek. He served in the Lord General’s Regiment of Foot Guards, which had a different character from the other guards regiments, since it had once formed part of the New Model Army of the Commonwealth.

  We took one of the palace barges downriver to the Fleet. It was the fastest way to get there and also the most convenient means for bringing back a corpse. Two soldiers came with us, carrying a bier.

  The oarsmen rowed hard against an incoming tide. They were sullen, for they knew the nature of the errand; none of the watermen cared to transport a dead body, and some accounted it unlucky. The water was choppy. It wasn’t a comfortable journey.

  ‘How did you find the body?’ I asked Thurloe as we went downstream.

  ‘Haven’t you seen my report?’

  ‘No, sir. Besides, I’d rather hear it from you.’

  He shrugged. ‘We found him a little upstream from the footbridge over the Fleet by Bridewell. One of my men saw the body – he was floating among the rubbish. No hat or shoes, but still in his coat, stockings, breeches and shirt. We pulled him out. He hadn’t been robbed – nearly two shillings in his purse and there’s a ring on his finger. His clothes aren’t much but you could raise a few shillings on them.’

  ‘Anything else in his pockets?’ I asked.

  ‘A pocket Bible.’ He glanced at me. ‘It’s not a bridge that many use after dark. Too ill-lit. Besides, that way into the City is notorious for thieves.’

  Our barge reached the mansions that lined the river frontage of the Strand. Seagulls swooped around us, and their harsh, sad cries filled the air.

  ‘Could the man have wandered there without knowing its reputation?’ I said.

  ‘Unlikely, unless he was a stranger.’

  ‘Any wound?’

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘A drunk taking a shortcut home? Perhaps he slipped, hit his head and fell in the Fleet.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible he wa
s after a Bridewell Bird,’ Thurloe said, picking at the question as if it were a scab, despite his reluctance to indulge in conjecture. ‘That could have brought him there.’ A note of disapproval entered his voice, a hint of the Puritan. ‘He didn’t look that sort of a man, but you can never tell. Lust is universal. The Devil makes sure of that.’

  My mind filled with an image of Olivia Alderley. A married woman I hardly knew, and so far above me in station that she might as well have been living on the moon. I told myself not to be a fool and pinched my thigh as hard as I could to distract my wandering thoughts.

  ‘But I don’t think he was alone, sir.’ Thurloe gave me a sardonic smile. ‘Because his thumbs were tied together.’

  Bridewell Dock came into sight. It was here that the Fleet flowed into the Thames. The battlemented walls of Bridewell reared up in front of us, set a little back from the sloping bank of the river on the left side of the lane running down to the dock.

  Once a royal palace, it now housed vagrants, foundlings and women of the streets, known collectively as Bridewell Birds. Their sexual favours came cheap. The Fire had coated the pink brick of the buildings with a patchwork of grey and sooty black; most of the roofs had fallen in. Some of the former inhabitants still clung to the shell of the place, for they had nowhere else to go.

  We disembarked and walked up the lane. The guards followed us at a distance with the bier. Immediately opposite Bridewell, at its northern end, was the bridge over the Fleet. On the other side was the postern through the wall of the City. The fire had destroyed the gate itself but the postern’s stone archway remained, framing the lane beyond. The two soldiers whom Thurloe had left to guard the body were leaning against a wall. They straightened when they saw us. One of them pushed a small earthenware bottle into his pocket.

  The soldiers were standing in the angle where a house met the wall of a yard. Behind them, on the ground in the corner, was a long bundle covered with a patched sail. A dozen bystanders watched from a distance, drawn by the combination of red coats and a dead body.

  ‘Uncover him,’ Thurloe ordered. ‘And shield us from those vultures.’