The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  In the paved court in front of the house I encountered a groom leading a horse round to the stables. His master had just returned, he said in an accent I found difficult to understand, and he was now talking to one of the gardeners in the lower garden.

  I went where his finger pointed and found Master Howgego himself at the entrance to an overgrown maze, in conference with a man dressed in rusty black and clutching a scythe.

  ‘It must all go,’ Master Howgego was saying. ‘Grub the damned thing up, root and branch. I will have a fountain here within a twelve-month.’

  He turned as he heard my footsteps. He was a fresh-faced old man with blunt, amiable features under a periwig that had not seen a comb for some time. I bowed and introduced myself. He read through my letter of introduction, raising bushy eyebrows when he came to Lord Arlington’s signature.

  ‘Clay pits, eh? Not on my land. By God, that would be a fine thing to have here – a pretty source of income, eh? And convenient, too – I mean to extend my house.’

  ‘Then perhaps the family who were here before might know of any clay pits. Do they live in the neighbourhood still?’

  Howgego shook his head. He turned to the gardener. ‘Did you ever hear of clay pits nearby? Or clay that might be capable of being fired?’

  The gardener said he hadn’t and added something in an accent so thick that he might have been speaking in Low Dutch for all I knew.

  ‘What?’ Howgego said, raising his voice. ‘Who?’

  The gardener said something else.

  Howgego turned to me. ‘He says Mother Grimes would know if anyone did. Her husband was the bailiff here, years ago, long before the war.’

  ‘Where can I find her, sir?’

  ‘She lives in a cottage over in Baynam’s Wood.’

  The gardener sucked in his breath. He crossed two fingers, one over the other, making the sign to avert evil that needed no translation.

  Howgego scowled at him and said to me, ‘We could walk over there now, if you like.’

  The gardener muttered something.

  ‘I shall do as I please, damn you,’ Howgego roared. ‘Now back to your work.’

  We left the fellow leaning on his scythe and contemplating the condemned maze. Master Howgego took me down the slope to a small lake.

  ‘I’ve met Mother Grimes only once,’ he said. ‘And that was when we considered coppicing the wood last year. It hasn’t been done since long before Cromwell’s time, so it’s in a sad state. We decided to leave it. The wood’s said to be haunted and the villagers won’t go there.’ He shot me a glance, probing and wary. ‘They think she’s a witch, of course.’

  I didn’t say anything, for witchcraft was one of those subjects like religion and politics where the less said the better, unless you knew who you were talking to. We passed through a gate in a paling and went into a meadow that sloped down to a brook fringed with alders and willows. The wood was on the far side, reached by a footbridge. It was bigger than I had expected and must have covered at least ten or fifteen acres.

  Even I could see that the place was a sad tangle of branches and bushes and fallen trees. The air smelled of rotting vegetation. The path we followed was muddy underfoot, and slippery with dead leaves. It looked as if deer and foxes used it far more than humans.

  ‘A lonely spot,’ I said, casting about for a way to enquire if there had been recent reports of strangers. ‘Do you get beggars down here?’

  ‘No. We hardly see a stranger from one month to another. Not that I’d notice if they were here. But Mother Grimes would.’ Howgego was sweating, though we were walking slowly and the day was not warm. He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. ‘I shall grub all this up too, one day,’ he said. ‘Sell the best of the timber and burn the rest. Turn the land to pasture.’

  ‘And the cottage?’

  ‘That will go. It’s little better than a cowshed with a chimney. But – but not a word of that to Mother Grimes, eh? She – I’m told that she becomes agitated at the most foolish things.’

  We came to a clearing, in the middle of which was a small, low cottage. The roof was green with age, and in places saplings and weeds sprouted from the thatch. At one end was a crude chimney built of brick and flint, from which a wisp of smoke rose into the dull grey air. The door was made of rough planks nailed together, the wood dark and fissured with age. A stream ran along the side of the clearing behind the cottage.

  ‘It is a mystery how she survives,’ Howgego whispered in my ear. ‘They say she feeds on roots, leaves, nuts and berries like the creatures of the wood. But I think the villagers leave food for her under cover of darkness.’

  ‘From charity?’

  ‘No. In the hope of winning her good will. Or at least of averting her ill will.’

  Howgego lingered on the edge of the clearing. I glanced towards the stream. At one point the bank sloped down to the water, and the ground was muddy. The earth at this point was much trampled. Close to the water’s edge, something white had been pegged to dry on a bush. The old woman’s shift? I took a step closer. It could almost be a shirt.

  ‘Master Marwood?’

  Howgego was at the door now, his hand raised to knock. I joined him. He knocked. Nothing happened, and after a moment he put his clenched fist to the door and gave it a solid double rap.

  We heard the raising of the latch within. Howgego stepped back, bumping into me. The door opened outwards, and a foul, stale smell washed over us. In the doorway was a small, round woman. She made no attempt to curtsy to her landlord, but merely stared at him – not at his face but at the silver buckle on the belt around his waist.

  ‘Mistress Grimes, good day to you,’ Master Howgego said. His voice was softer than before, and the words flowed jerkily. ‘How are you?’

  She said nothing in reply, though she allowed her hands to flutter at her sides in a gesture that might have meant ‘I am as you find me’ or ‘I am as well as can be expected’ or even ‘Why should you care?’

  ‘We’re come to beg a favour,’ Howgego continued. ‘This, by the way, is Master Marwood, all the way from London.’

  He paused but still she said nothing. A shiver tickled my spine. There was something not quite human about Mother Grimes. She wore a dress of sackcloth and a stained apron. On her head was a rumpled cap above a wrinkled face. Her nose was an upturned snout. A scattering of grey hairs grew on her chin and cheeks. Her eyes were brown, small and deep-set. I could not put an age on her: she might have been anywhere between forty and eighty.

  ‘Have you heard that London was destroyed in a great fire at the end of the summer?’

  At last she spoke in a faint voice that creaked, as though with disuse: ‘You must burn the stubble, when the harvest is in. Then you plough the earth. Only then may you sow the seed for the harvest that is to come.’

  ‘Yes, mistress, indeed.’ Howgego wiped his forehead again. ‘The city has been reduced to ashes, and the King has ordered that it must be rebuilt in brick and stone, so such a blaze should never take hold again.’

  ‘The King has no need of brick or stone,’ Mother Grimes informed him. ‘In His father’s house are many mansions.’

  A thousand devils, I thought: she means King Jesus. She’s another of these damned dreamers, like my father. And a witch as well. Was that possible?

  ‘To make bricks, one must have clay.’

  She shook her head. She stretched her hand to the latch, as if intending to shut us out. ‘Leave me,’ she said. ‘I’m weary.’

  ‘Pray, mistress, stay a moment,’ Howgego said.

  She mumbled something that had a rhythm to it, like a prayer or a curse. I could not catch the words, but I sensed the irritation behind them. Howgego took a step backwards.

  ‘Mistress,’ I said, ‘you and your husband must have served the family who lived here before Master Howgego. Did you ever hear them talk of clay pits in the neighbourhood in their time?’

  ‘No,’ she said, looking straight at me for t
he first time and no longer mumbling.

  ‘Perhaps I might speak to them myself. Do some of them still live nearby?’

  She shook her head. ‘All gone.’

  ‘Is there not a young lady? I thought the landlord of the inn told me—’

  ‘No.’

  She was looking into my eyes and her lips were moving silently. The shiver glided along my spine again. I am not superstitious, but no man liked to be cursed.

  Howgego touched my sleeve. ‘Come, sir. Mistress Grimes cannot help us and … and we must not outstay our welcome.’

  He bowed to Mother Grimes. I let him draw me away. As we crossed the clearing, I noticed two things.

  The eaves of the thatched roof came down to within two feet of the ground. An untidy pile of logs and brushwood had been stacked in their shelter beneath the wall of the cottage. There was a large footprint in the muddy ground beside it.

  Second, the shift had gone. Or the shirt.

  My first task was to reassure Master Howgego. He was twenty or thirty years older than I, a wealthy, vigorous man and on his own land; yet he needed reassurance. Not that he gave me a chance to say anything for the first few minutes. We walked in silence through the woodland, with him taking the lead and setting a fast pace.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said as we emerged from the trees. ‘It’s at least useful to know that she knows nothing of clay.’

  He paused in his flight. ‘Mother Grimes is – well, most strange, isn’t she?’ he said, panting slightly. ‘The villagers are quite terrified of her, and even the Rector treats her with circumspection.’ He moistened his lips and tried to smile. ‘I could have her evicted at any moment, of course, but I don’t care to. She’s an old woman, after all, and the widow of an estate servant. Besides, I don’t need to clear that wood at present – I have my hands full enough as it is.’

  We walked back towards the house. By the time he had shouted at the man with the scythe, who was grubbing up the maze far too slowly for his master’s satisfaction, Master Howgego had regained his former spirits. He insisted I come to the house to take a biscuit and a glass of wine.

  He took me into his library, where there was a fire burning, and went away to give orders to his people. I looked about me. Two walls were lined with presses, on top of which were busts of philosophers, emperors and generals from the ancient world. Over the fireplace hung a large painting showing a landscape strewn with ruins. My host had unexpected tastes.

  A large board stood, tilted on a stand, at right angles to the window. It looked familiar, though I had not been in this room before. I closed my eyes and suddenly my memory produced an image: a grey cloak hanging from a nail fixed to a stone wall. The cloak I had given to the strange girl at St Paul’s on the night it was destroyed. There had been another board near the cloak – the draughtsman’s. In my mind I saw the man’s thin, lined face, and the bony finger he had waved at me when he prevented me from taking away my own cloak.

  Howgego came back into the room, rubbing his hands, with a manservant carrying a tray of wine and biscuits. ‘Everything is in train, sir – you will stay and sup with me, will you not? The servants are so idle that it will do them good to bustle about for a change.’

  ‘I shall be glad to, sir.’ Dinner at the inn had been so bad that I was glad to have his invitation. I nodded at the drawing board. ‘Is that yours, by the way?’

  ‘No, no. It came with the house.’ He must have seen the puzzled look on my face, for he rushed on, ‘I bought most of the contents – Master Alderley was anxious to dispose of them, and he did not wish to have the trouble and expense of transporting them to London. His niece had no use for them – they had belonged to her aunt, I believe. He sold them to me for a very reasonable price.’

  Master Howgego’s Ipswich house had been very small. Being for many years a widower, he said, he had not troubled to furnish it with any care, so Master Alderley had done him a considerable service.

  ‘There are scores of books to be read,’ he went on, ‘though many of them I do not much care for.’

  ‘They were Master Alderley’s?’

  ‘No, sir – they belonged to the Eyres, the previous owners. Master Eyre and his wife spent two years travelling in France and Italy after their marriage.’ Howgego waved a dismissive finger at the busts that loomed over us in the shadows. ‘Hence all this, and much else. They were interested in architecture, and I believe if Master Eyre had been wealthy enough they would have razed this house and built a pagan temple to live in. Mistress Eyre was quite as bad as he. They designed imaginary cities together when they would have been better employed in studying their Bibles. And when he died, she attempted to train up her great-niece in these matters.’

  ‘Mistress Lovett?’

  Howgego nodded. ‘But Mistress Eyre died, and that was an end to it. Just as well for Mistress Lovett, perhaps – I hear the young lady is to be married, as is fitting for a maid, and what need would a wife have for all this?’

  The food we were served was admirably plentiful, and so was the wine. The hours passed agreeably. I was not surprised to learn that Master Howgego was a widower. I had come as a godsend to him. He grew lonely in the evenings with only the servants for company, and the neighbourhood offered him little society apart from the rector.

  He had been a merchant in Ipswich, he told me, importing timber and iron from Scandinavia, hemp from Latvia and coal from Newcastle. He had sold his business with the plan of retiring to the country. One of his fellow importers dealt professionally with Master Alderley, and had passed on the news that the Coldridge estate might be for sale.

  ‘I was fortunate,’ Master Howgego said, swirling the wine in his glass and peering into its depths. ‘And so was Master Alderley. Once I had seen the estate, we concluded the matter very quickly, and at a price that was not unreasonable.’ He peered earnestly at me. ‘I think you said you were not personally acquainted with him?’

  ‘No, sir. I’m not.’

  ‘In that case, I hope I may say without offence that I did not much take to his manner. These grand London folk give themselves airs, but in truth the Alderleys are no better bred than me or a score of merchants in Ipswich.’

  I stayed late. Master Howgego asked me to spend the night, but I declined, saying that I hoped to make an early start for Harwich in the morning, and I needed to give orders at the inn. He let me go with reluctance, and sent me back to the village with a servant to light my way.

  I was glad of the guide. There was no moon, and I had taken more sack than was altogether good for me. The air was chilly with a foretaste of the coming winter. The servant plodded ahead with the lantern swinging from the end of a pole. A cutting wind had sprung up while I was in the house, sweeping across the flat landscape from the German Ocean.

  By the time I reached the inn, I was shivering with cold. I did not wish for the company of rustics in the taproom, so I ordered a fire to be lit in my chamber.

  ‘A drop of mulled wine, sir?’ the slatternly maid suggested. ‘That’ll warm you.’

  I agreed, on the principle that by this stage a little more wine could hardly affect me one way or the other. She took a long time to bring it to me, and I snapped at her when at last she appeared. She cowered from my irritation, and her hands were shaking as she set down the wine on the table by the bed. I drank it for the warmth it gave, but my desire for wine had passed and it tasted sour in my mouth.

  I undressed to my shirt and climbed into bed. A great tiredness washed over me. I watched the candle flame casting its wavering light around the chamber. I knew I should blow it out and draw the curtains around the bed. I lacked the strength to do either. In a matter of seconds I fell into a sleep too deep for dreaming.

  When I woke, rushing up from the depths of slumber, it was pitch-black in the room. Griping pains were ripping my belly apart. My stomach muscles convulsed. I leaned over the edge of the bed and vomited copiously.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  FROM THE SMAL
L hours of Thursday morning to the point when the light was fading in the afternoon, I emptied the contents of my stomach by one route or the other. The process was relentless and seemed to have very little to do with me. It was as if I were a wet cloth and a giant hand were wringing me dry, methodically squeezing out every last drop.

  I was feverish, for I dreamed that I walked among smouldering ashes that stretched as far as the eye could see under a leaden sky. It was mysteriously essential that I should reach my destination, not that I knew what or where it was, only that it was so far away that I could not possibly succeed. All this was so vivid that I understood that it was no dream, but real life, and that therefore everything else had been a dream; so I had been mistaken all along about the nature of terrestrial existence.

  People came and went. Servants, the innkeeper, a clergyman and Master Howgego. Sometimes they tried to give me water. Master Howgego was in a great passion about something, and the sound of his voice made my head ache even more than it was aching already.

  A man in a dirty smock put leeches on me. It had not been a shift on the bush, I thought, suddenly certain. A shirt.

  The leeches lay like slugs on my skin and their nibbling was oddly soothing. Afterwards, I slept.

  A little later, a large man smelling of pigs carried me downstairs and laid me in a dark box. The box moved, and so did I, jolting up and down. I heard the hooves of horses and thought it possible I was being conveyed to my grave. This failed to interest me very much, though I wished the motion would stop. Then I was distracted, for I retched painfully, bringing up nothing but a little sour spittle. Someone swore.

  Later still, I was in a bedroom. Flames flickered over a plaster ceiling, consuming the animals and plants I saw there. ‘Help!’ I cried. ‘Fire! Fire!’

  Someone gave me a drink that tasted bitter. A few seconds later, I brought most of it up again. I lay back exhausted, staring at the flaming ceiling. I saw the footprint of a man among the animals and plants, which struck me as important.

  Perhaps, I thought, it is the Garden of Eden above me, and that is Adam’s footprint in Mother Grimes’s wood, which is part of Eden. Perhaps Adam set it on fire and burned it to ashes. That was the original sin.