The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘You haven’t got a box for your things,’ Mistress Noxon said, making it sound like an accusation, for every servant should have a box. ‘I suppose you might as well have this when I’ve emptied it.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘WHAT MAN?’ CAT said.

  ‘A young man,’ Master Hakesby murmured. ‘He took one look at the cloak and was instantly persuaded it was his. But I told him it was not, and in the end he went away. But I thought it wise to bring it back today – he seemed to have taken such an inexplicable fancy to it, after all. It should have occurred to me to bring it before – with weather like this you must have a use for it.’

  He held up the grey cloak and draped it over Cat’s arm. They were standing in the doorway of Master Hakesby’s room and talking in low voices. Dr Wren had honoured Master Hakesby with a visit. He was sitting at the table by the window and computing columns of figures.

  ‘But what sort of man was he, sir?’ Cat said. ‘His appearance? His station in life?’

  Hakesby glanced curiously at her, and she knew she had made a mistake: she had forgotten that she was here as a servant; she had spoken to him in her natural voice, as if he were her equal.

  ‘A clerk, perhaps?’ he said. ‘I asked Master Frewin about him afterwards – the Clerk to the Chapter, you know; it was he that the young man came to see. Master Frewin said he was one of Lord Arlington’s men come to inspect the fabric.’ Hakesby’s right hand began to tremble. He thrust it out of sight into his pocket. ‘Not that he was there long enough to see very much at all. Master Frewin thinks he was sent merely to keep us on our mettle, to remind us that the King and the court have their eyes on us.’

  ‘Master Hakesby?’ Wren glanced up, and his eyes fell on Cat. He frowned. ‘If you have a moment, would you be so good as to cast your eyes over these calculations?’

  Cat was dismissed. She dropped a curtsy and left the room. She carried the cloak up to the attic she shared with Margery and then returned to her afternoon duties. The rest of the day passed in an uncomfortable daze, which she realized in the end was the next best thing to fear. At dinnertime, she snapped at John when he asked if she meant to have an outing on Lord Mayor’s Day, the public holiday that fell next month, with the unexpressed but obvious hope that she might like to share the day with him.

  ‘Hoity-toity,’ Margery murmured, and Mistress Noxon said that they would eat in silence if they could not behave with Christian civility to one another.

  Cat was desperate to know more from Hakesby. But he and Dr Wren were at work all afternoon. It was not until after six that Cat heard Hakesby’s feet descending the stairs. She ran up to the hall and contrived to waylay him before he reached the door.

  ‘Sir, I pray you, a word before you go.’

  He stooped over her, his grey hair swaying like curtains on either side of his thin face. ‘What is it, my dear?’

  It was the first time he had called her ‘my dear’ – indeed, the first time that anyone had done so for years, even poor Jem. She was not sure she liked it.

  ‘The man, sir,’ she said. ‘The man who saw the cloak. What was he like?’

  ‘Like? Much like most young men, I suppose. Middling height. Thin as a rake.’

  ‘How was he dressed?’

  ‘I can’t recall – no, stay, he wore green, I remember that because it struck me that the colour would have been thought rather lively for a Whitehall clerk in the Lord Protector’s time. I was there, you know, at Whitehall. I worked as a senior draughtsman for the Surveyor General.’

  Cat’s lips moved but the words made hardly any sound. ‘A green coat?’

  ‘Yes. A green coat. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I – I wondered. It seemed so strange.’ She hesitated and then made up her mind to confide a little more in him. ‘John marked a man in a green coat in the court.’

  Hakesby shrugged, settling his own cloak around his shoulders. ‘Is there anything so very curious about that? Many men wear green coats, especially young and foolish ones. I wouldn’t let it concern you.’ He took a step toward the door, and then paused. ‘Ah – I wonder – I have a suggestion – a request. A favour, even.’

  He looked at her, smiling and moistening his lips. She recoiled, thinking: Oh no, not him too.

  ‘You recall that you assisted me the other day with a little work of my own?’

  She blinked as relief rushed over her. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I wonder – if I had a word with Mistress Noxon and made it right with her – would you do some more?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, sir.’ She swallowed.

  ‘Acting as my amanuensis, you might say. Just occasionally. Do you know what an amanuensis is?’

  ‘Yes, sir. One who takes dictation.’

  He frowned, and she knew she had made another mistake. ‘You’re full of surprises, Jane.’

  When Master Hakesby had gone, Cat stood for a moment in the hall, shivering. The suggestion would have delighted her this morning, and even now it brought her pleasure: this knowledge that Master Hakesby, having seen her work, wished her to do more.

  But now she was too afraid to enjoy it.

  A thin young man in a green coat had followed John when he brought Jem’s box from Barnabas Place. A thin young man in a green coat had noticed her cloak at St Paul’s, and this young man worked for Lord Arlington.

  In terms of logic, it did not necessarily follow that the first thin young man in a green coat was the same as the second.

  But if he were … How could he have known that it was her cloak, the stolen cloak, hanging in Convocation House Yard? No one at Barnabas Place could have told him that, because no one there had known that she had had it. Only Jem had known, but he was dead.

  The young man had recognized the cloak. He had said it was his. There was an obvious and simple explanation for this: that he was speaking the truth.

  In which case, Lord Arlington’s clerk in Convocation House Yard was none other than the man whose hand she had bitten on the night that the Fire destroyed St Paul’s. The thin young man in a green coat was identical to the thin young man who had dragged her away from the flames.

  Was he therefore a government spy? Had he known why she was at St Paul’s that night?

  It was raining hard. The clocks of the neighbourhood had struck midnight some time ago.

  Mistress Noxon was in bed and presumably asleep. John slept beyond the kitchen. Margery was in the attic, with Cat; but she slept like the dead and snored like the Last Trump.

  Cat would be undisturbed, so long as she were careful.

  Cat’s candle was still burning. She got out of her bed, a straw mattress near the window, and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. Her box, Jem’s box, was at the head of the bed. Cat kept it beside the mattress she slept on, with its key concealed in the crack where the boards of the floor met the wall. The box contained her few clothes, the bag she had brought from Barnabas Place, the box of drawing instruments from Great Aunt Eyre, and the pieces of paper that she gathered as and when she could from Master Hakesby’s scraps, to be hoarded for times like this.

  She knelt down, turned the key, lifted the lid and took out paper and pencil. She smoothed out a sheet on the top of the box, weighting it with the candlestick, Hepzibah and the key. Working rapidly, and shielding the stub of the candle with her left arm, she sketched in freehand the outlines of an elegant open space, a hexagon, into which avenues entered in the centre of each of the six sides. There would be a public garden in the open space, laid out with statues and at least one fountain.

  As the lines glided across the paper, the buildings and streets rose above them in her mind, the parts perfectly in balance with each other, forming the heart of a magnificent city empty of people.

  This work was the only effective distraction from the incessant interior interrogation that Master Hakesby had unwittingly set in train in the afternoon. No wonder, Cat thought, that they called God the Great Architect. If you were omnipotent and had
all the time in eternity, what better way to use these blessings than to design an entire universe and all it contained? What better way to forget yourself?

  The wind was rising, throwing squally gusts against the window. She worked on and the candle burned lower. Margery snuffled in her sleep.

  The door latch cracked up.

  Cat swung round. Mistress Noxon was in the doorway, wrapped in her bedgown and wearing a shawl and a nightcap.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed.

  Cat pushed the paper aside, trying to conceal it with a fold of the blanket.

  ‘Mistress, forgive me—’

  ‘I thought you’d fallen asleep and left your candle burning. For all I know, you’d burn the whole house about our ears.’

  Cat shook her head violently. She had dreams of fire and falling houses and, worst of all, the ferocious crackle of the flames as they devoured whatever lay in their path.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and meant it, for everyone was afraid of fire now.

  Mistress Noxon advanced into the room and held up her own candle. ‘What’s this? The paper?’

  There was no help for it. Cat pulled the blanket aside.

  Mistress Noxon took the paper and held it to the candle flame, tilting it this way and that to see it better. She frowned. ‘You strange, unnatural girl,’ she said softly, but the anger had left her voice and was replaced with a sort of wonder. ‘Why do you draw such things?’

  ‘They interest me, mistress. I – I cannot help it.’

  ‘You’re mad. Mad as a March hare.’

  Margery snored on.

  ‘I have an aptitude. A desire.’

  ‘An aptitude?’ Mistress Noxon snorted. ‘More like a moonshine fancy. I never heard of such a thing. As for the rest—’

  ‘Yesterday, I did some copying for Master Hakesby and—’

  ‘I know you did, and took yourself away from your work. Your proper work.’

  ‘And Dr Wren saw what I had done as well, and he thought it was passable. Today, Master Hakesby asked me if I would do more for him.’

  ‘He’s a single gentleman,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘He’s a widower, you know, so he was accustomed to his comforts and doubtless wants them still. So you’ll do no such thing. I know what he’s after.’

  ‘No, mistress – it’s not that, I think. He wants me to help him with his drawing. He has the ague and his hands shake.’

  ‘His ague? Is that what he calls it?’

  ‘He said he would talk to you about it.’

  Mistress Noxon sighed. She handed the sheet of paper to Cat. She was silent for a moment and then she said, very quietly, ‘You were never easy, even as a child.’

  ‘But you didn’t know me then, mistress.’

  ‘My uncle did,’ Mistress Noxon snapped. ‘Better than your own father and mother, maybe. He said you were like a changeling. Something the fairies left behind.’

  Cat’s eyes drifted back to the paper. Instead of a public garden, should there perhaps be a church in the middle of the piazza? A church of six bays with a spire rising by stages from a square tower.

  ‘Why are you doing this nonsense now?’ Mistress Noxon said.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep. I – I was fearful.’ Even the piazza would not take that away. ‘The man who was in the yard yesterday. The one John said was following him from Barnabas Place. I think he’s looking for me.’

  ‘You’re mad. Why should he be doing that? Put that rubbish away and go to bed.’

  When she was alone, Cat blew out the candle and lay in the comforting darkness with Hepzibah growing warmer in her hand. Margery’s snores mingled with the tapping of the rain on the window.

  She would not let them take her back to Barnabas Place. She would sooner die. At best, her uncle would force her to marry Sir Denzil, condemning her to a living nightmare and losing all control of her aunt’s estate in the process. At worst, they would lay information against her and put her on trial for the attempted murder of her cousin. Uncle Alderley had probably talked in confidence to one of his Whitehall friends already. But whom did they really want? Her father or herself?

  Slowly Hepzibah worked her old magic. The clerk might have followed Jem’s box to see where it was taken, but he could not have discovered that Cat was living at Three Cocks Yard. Even the grey cloak at St Paul’s could have told him nothing about her for certain. If she kept herself to herself, she could be safe.

  In the meantime she would wait for the future to show itself. In a perfect world, she would kill her cousin Edward, for had he not killed something in her? In a perfect world, she would work for Master Hakesby. In a perfect world, she would not be obliged to go into exile with her father, assuming she ever found him, for she would always be a poor second best to his God.

  A nameless emotion rippled through her at the thought of him, and Hepzibah’s reassurance was powerless to fight it. He was her father, after all, and that meant something, though she was not sure exactly what. She could not abandon him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  IN THE MORNING, it was raining more heavily. I settled my father by the fire with strict instructions not to ramble in the garden or to bother Mistress Ralston. I walked down to the river and hired a tilt boat to take me downstream to the public stairs at Whitehall.

  Master Williamson was not at Scotland Yard. I went to his room at Lord Arlington’s office in the Privy Garden. A supercilious clerk directed me to the Matted Gallery. The gallery was crowded with people strolling slowly up and down, bowing to their acquaintance. It was a favourite resort at the palace, especially when the weather was too bad for the park.

  I found Williamson standing by a window at the far end, looking down on the garden below. He was humming a tune under his breath, as he often did when wrapped in thought.

  ‘His lordship is in the Duke’s closet,’ he said without preamble, having realized that I was almost at his elbow. ‘It’s mighty inconvenient. He commanded me to wait for him here, but I have a thousand things to do.’

  He took me by the arm and drew me into an alcove in which was a table displaying a clock of great antiquity. His eyes were everywhere apart from my face, constantly searching the throng of people in the gallery.

  ‘But it’s well you’re here,’ he went on. ‘I need to be quite sure about something. This Coldridge you mentioned. You’re sure this was the name you saw in the manservant’s box, and also the name that Sneyd’s comrade was using?’

  ‘Beyond all doubt, sir. “Coldridge PW” was written on the paper enclosing the guineas in Layne’s box, though the handwriting was not his.’ I wondered why it was so important for Williamson to check what I had told him yesterday. ‘And Mistress Sneyd certainly told me that her husband’s comrade was called Coldridge.’

  ‘Did you ask your father about him?’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t know the name.’

  ‘Did not?’ Williamson said sharply. ‘Or would not admit it?’

  ‘I caught him at a lucid moment. I believe I know when he tells me the truth.’

  Williamson grunted. ‘And you’ve learned nothing more about this Coldridge?’

  ‘Only this, sir.’ I decided to tell him of the speculation that had come to me in the cathedral. I had not mentioned it yesterday as it seemed far-fetched. But now I wanted to divert Williamson’s attention from my father. ‘It struck me that “PW” might refer to Paul’s Walk. In which case the paper gave a name and a place. Could that have been the reason Layne went to St Paul’s on the night the Fire destroyed it?’

  ‘To meet Coldridge?’

  ‘Or to spy on a meeting between Coldridge and another person – Jem Brockhurst, the servant who was flogged to death?’

  Williamson chewed his lower lip. ‘It’s possible,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll turn it over in my mind.’ All of a sudden, he snapped out of his reverie and became his usual self. ‘I’m engaged here, Marwood, but there’s no need for you to be idle. I want you to complete the current list of my news
correspondents. It shouldn’t take you long. Then take the Gazette proof back to Master Newcomb. Tell him—’ He looked past me, and suddenly his face creased into a smile. ‘Sir Denzil – your servant, sir.’ He swept into a low bow. ‘And yours too, sir.’ Another bow, even lower. ‘What a pleasure to see you at court again.’

  I turned. Master Alderley and Sir Denzil Croughton were approaching, arm-in-arm. They separated themselves and bowed to Master Williamson. I bowed as well, but their eyes slid over me, and they did not return my courtesy.

  ‘We are come to wait on the Duke of York,’ Sir Denzil said in his high, weary voice. ‘By his express command. But my Lord Arlington is with him.’

  Williamson bowed again, acknowledging the manifest importance of this. ‘He wishes for your assistance, sir?’ he said to Master Alderley.

  ‘Yes. A small matter, but urgent. To His Royal Highness, at least.’

  ‘Small?’ Sir Denzil laughed. ‘Small?’ His voice dropped almost to a whisper. ‘By God, sir, there are few people in this gallery – few people in England, indeed – for whom two thousand, four hundred pounds is a small sum. And fewer still who could lay their hands on it at the drop of a hat.’

  ‘You flatter me, sir.’ Master Alderley smiled. ‘It is not ready money, after all – merely a matter of credit at short notice. A trifle.’

  ‘Ha!’ Sir Denzil cried. ‘If that’s a trifle, sir, then I’m a poxy Dutch whore, sir, and be damned to me!’

  I stared at the muddy matting on the floor, knowing that I was of so little account to these gentlemen that they saw no need to set curbs on their tongues. How strange to lend a man money you did not have. The currency such people dealt in was not gold and silver: it was promises and dreams.

  The three gentlemen began to walk slowly down the length of the gallery, with Alderley in the middle. In the absence of any instructions to the contrary, I followed, two paces behind Master Williamson.

  Sir Denzil stopped suddenly. ‘Look.’