The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘Why?’ Master Frewin said. ‘What’s it all for?’ He turned and stumbled along the cloister walk, leaving me in the doorway.

  Now I was here, I had to force myself to enter the church. I walked up to the crossing. The great pillars that held up the tower were cracked and leaning. The roof remained over the high altar at the east end, but it was particularly dangerous in that part of the building because of the collapse of the choir floor into St Faith’s in the crypt below.

  Surely they could not rebuild this? The Fire’s destruction had ravaged a building that had already been tottering. During the war and under the Commonwealth, the authorities had encouraged the physical decay of the cathedral, as well as challenging its sanctity. Cromwell had stabled a regiment of cavalry in the cathedral, and the troopers had ridden their horses up and down the steps to the choir. My father had cheered.

  Huge though the cathedral was, it was difficult to move around it easily – partly because of the rubble, and partly because the workmen filled what open space there was. I zigzagged through the ruins to what was left of Bishop Kempe’s chapel in Paul’s Walk. This was just west of the crossing, on the north side of the nave. Even before the Fire, the chantry had been in a decayed condition. Some of its stones had been stolen. The statues that had filled the niches had been decapitated or entirely destroyed.

  Little was now left of the chapel or its past history. I scrambled over a heap of stones to reach it. There were still fragments of carving, some with traces of faded paint attached to them. The altar block was there, though it had been thrown off its dais. The heat had cracked it in two. I wondered whether the pimp and his ballads had survived the Fire.

  This was where Layne’s body had been found, his thumbs tied behind his back, squeezed between the altar and the chantry wall.

  Someone was shouting behind me, near to the temporary screen at the west end of the nave. One of the workmen was ordering his dinner.

  The manservant must have been killed on the very night that the Fire had destroyed St Paul’s. Otherwise the corpse would have been found sooner. The church had been full of people seeking refuge before that for both themselves and their possessions.

  ‘And a jug of ale,’ the workman shouted, his voice hoarse. ‘Make sure it’s cold, Richard. None of your lukewarm slop like last time.’

  I wasn’t listening to what the labourer was shouting. My mind was concentrating on Layne’s murder and the night of the Fire in Paul’s Walk. But I heard the sounds of his words, and some part of my mind imposed a meaning on them.

  Make sure it’s cold, Richard. Cold, Rich. Coldridge.

  I looked down Paul’s Walk at the man who wanted his dinner.

  Words made patterns.

  Coldridge PW, I thought. Coldridge, Paul’s Walk.

  I walked back through the cloister ruins and pushed aside the leather curtain. I was in a hurry to be gone – I needed to report to Master Williamson at Whitehall, and I had already lingered here too long.

  Master Frewin was nowhere to be seen in the shed that served as a workshop. I approached an elderly draughtsman stooping over his board, and asked where the Chapter Clerk might be found.

  He straightened his spine and rubbed his eyes. ‘He’s probably in his private room.’

  ‘Then would you say farewell to him, sir, on my behalf and give him my thanks? My name is Marwood, on business from Whitehall.’

  ‘He’ll not be long, if you care to wait.’ The draughtsman waved a bony finger with an untrimmed nail at the end of it. ‘He works over there, and his inkpot is still uncovered.’

  I followed the direction of the finger. I saw Master Frewin’s stool and desk, not five yards away, with a flight of wooden steps rising up the wall behind it. At the top of the steps was a door, which I assumed led to Master Frewin’s private room.

  I also saw a cloak. It was hanging on a rusty nail that had been hammered between two stone blocks of the wall between the draughtsman’s stool and Master Frewin’s. The cloak was grey, made of wool but lightweight – not for winter use. It was on the shabby side.

  Frowning, I walked over to it and fingered the material. It smelled of burning, as did almost everything at present.

  A shock ran through me, as if I had fallen into cold water. There was a long rip on the left-hand side of the lining, where a cutpurse’s knife had gone astray in the summer of the plague.

  I lifted it from the nail and turned back to the draughtsman. ‘Sir – this is mine, I believe.’

  The man inclined his head courteously. ‘I believe not, sir.’

  ‘But I’m sure of it, sir.’ I held up the cloak. ‘I don’t know how it came here, but see this tear here – I remember it well.’

  The last time I had seen the cloak was when it was protecting the modesty of the young woman who had repaid me by sinking her teeth into my hand.

  ‘You are mistaken, sir. I know that for a fact.’ The draughtsman came towards me and, with unexpected firmness, took the cloak and hung it back on the nail. ‘An easy mistake. One grey cloak is much like another, just as all cats are grey in the dark.’ He looked past me and over my head. ‘Ah. And here is Master Frewin on the stairs. You may make your farewells in person.’

  Sometimes I hated my father almost as much as I loved him.

  He brought down troubles on his own head, and also on the heads of those around him. In Oliver’s time, and before that, he had been a stationer. He had been a printer in a small way, living and working in Pater Noster Row. He had inherited the press and the business from his father-in-law, to whom he had been apprenticed.

  We had been comfortable enough when I was a child, despite the war. But my father did not prosper when Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector. He blamed this partly on my mother, on the grounds that God was punishing her, and us, for trying to persuade him that Cromwell’s rule would bring peace and stability to the realm, and that this was all that mattered.

  ‘But there is no peace worthy of the name,’ my father had said at the deathbed of my little sister, who had died of a vomiting fit before her first birthday, ‘other than God’s peace. Thanks be to God. Stop your wailing, woman. You should weep tears of joy for her.’

  When the King returned, my father had been too honest to change his opinions and too foolish to hide them. This Charles Stuart, he was wont to tell me, was a man of blood like his father, a spawn of the Devil, a lover of foreign whores and a Papist in Protestant clothing. He reminded me that we had seen one king’s head removed from his body. God willing, there was no reason why we should not see another lose his head.

  Even then, I had known that it would be only a matter of time before my father’s opinions brought him into conflict with the authorities. When they arrested him at last, he was a hale, middle-aged man. When they let him out, five years later, his body was feeble and his wits wandered.

  Unfortunately it wasn’t just his wits that wandered. When I returned from Whitehall that evening, Mistress Ralston was waiting in the kitchen.

  ‘The old man’s outside somewhere. The Lord alone knows where.’

  ‘In the garden?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  I reined in my anger, for she made him sound like a straying dog. ‘When did he go out, mistress?’

  ‘As it was getting dark.’

  I glanced at the pegs by the door. ‘Without his hat? Without his cloak?’

  Mistress Ralston shrugged. ‘I’m not his mother. He’s a grown man.’

  I turned to go.

  ‘Master Ralston’s not pleased,’ Mistress Ralston said. ‘You’ll have to take your father away. He’s decided. You are paid up until next Friday so you can have until then.’

  It was cool outside, and the air smelled of the river. A light rain was falling, soft as a caress. The stars were out.

  My eyes adjusted to what light there was. The market garden was laid out with great regularity, for Master Ralston was orderly by nature. I paced slowly up and down the long, straight paths, navigati
ng by memory as much as by sight. As I walked, I called my father’s name.

  On either side were raised beds where, in their seasons, Master Ralston cultivated soft fruits, herbs and all things fit for salads. I came at last to the orchard that took up more than a quarter of the garden’s area. Apple, plum and pear trees had been espaliered against a south-facing wall, and the standards were lined up with the regularity of Ironsides on parade.

  ‘My son. My son.’

  My father was sitting on the sodden ground and leaning back against the trunk of one of the standards.

  ‘This is an apple tree,’ he said, through chattering teeth.

  ‘Yes, Father. But you must come back into the house.’

  ‘An apple tree. Whereof Eve did eat, and therefore was forever cursed, as were all the generations of man that grew from her womb.’

  ‘It grows late, sir. Let me help you up.’

  His limbs were stiff. He clung to my arm and I hauled him up with some difficulty. Despite his frail body, he was surprisingly heavy. I guided his wavering footsteps back to the cottage. The kitchen was in darkness when we got there, for the Ralstons had retired for the night and taken the candle with them.

  There was still a red glow from the banked-up fire. I lit a taper from an ember and by its light found our candle on the dresser.

  ‘The King is coming,’ my father said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I lifted a chair into the ingle and guided him to it. ‘Sit down.’ I fetched his cloak and draped it over his shoulders. ‘You must not go out in the dark. Besides, the weather is turning colder. You must wear your cloak when you venture outside, sir, and your hat.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. You needn’t concern yourself.’ He sounded almost his old self, brisk and assured.

  I said, ‘Tell me, sir, were you ever acquainted with a man named Coldridge?’

  ‘Coldridge? No.’

  ‘Or did you ever hear tell of a man with that name?’

  ‘No.’ He leaned forward in the chair, and I sensed that I had lost him again. ‘But I’ll tell you something, if you like.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The King is coming.’

  ‘I think not.’ I filled a cup from the kettle, which still contained a little lukewarm water. ‘Drink – it will warm you.’

  He struggled to rise. ‘The King—’

  I pushed him gently back into the chair. ‘What would His Majesty want with plain folk like us? Or we with him? Drink, I pray you.’

  My father took the cup but did not drink. ‘The King comes to all, James, high and low.’

  A suspicion crept into my mind. ‘Which king, sir?’

  ‘Why, I do not mean that man of sin, Charles Stuart, the son of the man of blood. I mean King Jesus.’

  That night I had little sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the snores of my father beside me.

  Towards dawn I dozed for a while, my mind drifting into that borderless territory between the past and the present where dreams and nightmares walk. I was a child again, and going to Whitehall, walking towards a gateway that stood between tall towers. The brickwork was chequered black and white. Despite its size, it was quite overshadowed by a building at right angles to it, a slab of stone and glass that reared up on the left.

  There were more walls on the right so the people were hemmed in on all sides except the way they had come. The soldiers lined the walls and clustered particularly thickly in front of the tall building. Their helmets and breastplates gleamed. Their red sashes were stripes of blood.

  A man said: ‘He’s there already, Master Marwood.’

  ‘Where?’ my father asked.

  The man jerked a thumb at the big building, which was behind him. ‘In there. The Banqueting House.’

  ‘When will they do it?’

  ‘No one knows.’ He nodded at a stage draped in black that projected from it. ‘But that’s where.’

  Time passed.

  I grew colder and colder. The crowd was never still and I was so small and restless that men kept treading on my feet or knocking against me. I was hungry. The very name of the Banqueting House made my mouth water. The great ladies and gentlemen would be inside, and the soldiers’ captains and colonels, dining on joints of meat served on gold plates and dripping with gravy.

  The air filled with the chimes of many clocks. My father chafed my hands to warm them. He gave me the heel of yesterday’s loaf to take the edge off my hunger, and cut me a piece of hard cheese with his horn-handled knife.

  ‘You’ve been good,’ he said. ‘You must be brave now, child, for the sake of King Jesus.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  JOHN TOWERED OVER Mistress Noxon. His cheeks were flushed, and his chin poked out. ‘I tell you, mistress, he were following me.’

  ‘Nonsense. Put it in the corner there for the time being, beside the dresser.’

  He set down Jem’s box on the kitchen floor and straightened, smoothing his hands on his breeches. He gave her the key for the box. Only then did he say, ‘He were, though.’

  For John, usually so silent, this was eloquence. Cat, who had been staring at the familiar box, turned her eyes on him. He blushed and smiled at her.

  ‘Who was?’ Mistress Noxon said.

  He dragged his eyes away from Cat. ‘Skinny fellow. From Barnabas Place, then all the way down Fetter Lane, then in Fleet Street.’

  ‘Someone walking in the same direction. Nothing strange in that.’

  The chin poked out a little more. ‘I know when a man’s watching me, mistress.’

  ‘Why would anyone watch you?’

  ‘Green coat?’ Margery said.

  Mistress Noxon shot her a look of outrage for presuming to interrupt.

  But John was nodding. ‘Yes, that’s him.’ He swung back to Mistress Noxon. ‘See, mistress? Margery saw him too.’

  Mistress Noxon frowned. ‘How? You’ve been in the house all day.’

  Margery said, ‘I went upstairs for a clean apron, mistress. I chanced to look out.’

  She had been watching out for John, Cat guessed, that was why. That’s what love did – it made a fool of you.

  ‘What did you see?’ Mistress Noxon said.

  ‘A young man, mistress, in a green coat. Not a one you’d pay much attention to in the normal run of things.’

  ‘Well dressed?’

  Margery shook her head. ‘A clerk, maybe, or a shopman. I couldn’t see his face because of the brim of his hat. But John’s in the right of it, he wasn’t a big man.’

  ‘I could have snapped him in two like a twig if I’d a mind to,’ John said.

  ‘He stopped by the pump,’ Margery went on, bent on making the most of this opportunity. ‘Wrote something in a book he had in his pocket.’

  ‘He’s up to no good,’ John said with finality. ‘Sneaking after me like that. Next thing we know he’ll murder us all in our beds.’

  ‘That’s plain foolish, John,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘And you know it is.’

  ‘I know what I saw, mistress. And it weren’t just me. It were our Margery too. She saw him.’

  Mistress Noxon stared at the faces of the servants around her. ‘Very well. Tell me if you see this fellow again.’

  ‘Like a twig,’ said John, smiling at Cat and nodding vigorously. ‘I could snap him like a twig.’

  ‘This won’t get Master Hakesby’s supper on the table, will it?’ Mistress Noxon snapped. ‘Come on – to work, you idle rogues.’

  Later, when supper had been cleared away, when John had gone to his straw mattress in the lean-to in the yard, and Margery, complaining of a headache, had hauled herself up the stairs to bed, Mistress Noxon came out of her private room.

  Cat was on her hands and knees before the hearth, shovelling ash.

  ‘Just as I thought,’ Mistress Noxon said in a low voice. ‘Nothing in the box, nothing but rubbish, and not much of that, either. Which is not to be wondered at. I’m sure those knaves at Barnabas Place took anything of value before
my poor uncle was in his grave.’

  Cat stood up, brushing her dress.

  Mistress Noxon had an old coat over her arm and a collection of objects in her hands. She dumped them on the kitchen table.

  Cat looked at what was left of Jem. The silver cup, tarnished and dented, that Jem had been given at his christening. The serge coat he wore on Sundays. The Bible he read every evening, holding it up to his eyes. The bowl that Cat’s mother had thrown onto the rubbish heap at the Bow Lane house, and Jem had taken in because it still had some use in it. And Hepzibah, the doll Jem had made for Cat when she was so little that she had believed Jem to be her father.

  ‘Names have meanings,’ Jem had told her, for he knew such things from another life and could translate words from Latin, Greek and even Hebrew. ‘Hepzibah signifies “my delight is in you”. Also it means the one you protect.’

  She had sensed even then that he had not been talking about the doll but about her.

  ‘That’s everything,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘Can you believe it? That a man should leave so little behind him.’ She hesitated, and then lowered her voice. ‘Do you happen to know if he had anything else?’

  ‘There should be an almanac,’ Cat said. ‘He always had an almanac. I bought him one every year.’

  Mistress Noxon sniffed. ‘He believed such foolishness? All those prophecies? You’d have thought the astrologers would have warned us about the Fire beforehand, instead of saying they did afterwards. And they should have warned my uncle about—’ She broke off, and turned her head away from the candle on the table. ‘Well, that’s all over with. He believed all manner of nonsense, and so for that matter did your father.’ She jerked her head at the objects on the table. ‘Is that doll yours?’

  ‘It was, mistress. He made it for me. And when I grew too old for it, he said he would have it.’ Cat swallowed. ‘He said he would keep it for my children.’

  ‘You’d better take it, then.’

  ‘I won’t have any children.’

  ‘Take it.’

  Cat picked up the doll, wrapping her fingers around its familiar shape. There were tooth-marks on Hepzibah’s head, for Cat had found the taste of her strangely comforting.