The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  The alternative was just as bad: that Master Alderley had by some fraudulent means cancelled the trusteeship of his former brother-in-law.

  Whichever of these was true, the fact remained that Sir Denzil appeared to be under the illusion that when he married his betrothed, she would bring him the estate of Coldridge as her dowry.

  In sum, Alderley had lied to his niece’s future husband. He might also have committed forgery and embezzlement. He might even be guilty of aiding and abetting a Regicide.

  A very different aspect of the matter struck me: how convenient, I thought, if Alderley were found guilty of high treason. His possessions would then be forfeit to the Crown. The debts of the King and his brother would be wiped out at a stroke.

  Where did this leave me? I was involved in this business, whether I liked it or not. The King, I thought, must have the power to investigate these matters in public, and with all the instruments at his disposal. But he – or rather his creature, Chiffinch – had chosen not to. Instead they employed me to ferret on their behalf.

  It was not safe to know these facts. It was not safe to speculate about them. Most of all, it was not safe to be Master Chiffinch’s ferret.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SUNDAY MEANT CHURCH once a day, and sometimes twice if Mistress Noxon felt inclined to be godly. At church, you encountered half the neighbourhood, and anyone might catch a glimpse of your face.

  The following Sunday, Mistress Noxon marshalled the servants, inspected their appearance and marched them from Three Cocks Yard to the crumbling church of St Clement Danes in the middle of the Strand. Cat walked beside John, knowing his bulk shielded her entirely from the world, at least on one side, and she had the wall on the other. Margery walked behind with the kitchen boy. Cat couldn’t see Margery, but she knew that she was casting malign looks at her. She imagined them like poisoned arrows, sticking out of her back like the quills of a hedgehog.

  Mistress Noxon had her seat in the nave, not far from the pulpit and paid for on an annual basis. But the rest of them from Three Cocks Yard trooped up to the gallery reserved for servants, where they could watch the heads of ladies and gentlemen below and speculate about which of them would fall asleep first during the sermon. Since the Fire, the church’s congregation had become much larger, for the parish was packed with strangers from the burned-out areas. The tower was still used as a depository for some of the refugees’ possessions.

  They were a little late, and so Cat was spared the milling around outside beforehand. The balcony was crowded and there was only standing room for the four of them at the back. A pillar obscured their view of the pulpit and the congregation in the nave.

  For Cat, this was a blessing. She spent the service with her eyes cast down, distracting herself by thinking about the Vitruvian virtues, namely that a well-made building should be characterized by firmitas, utilitas, venustas – that is, it must be solid, useful, beautiful. ‘Like the nests of birds and bees,’ Aunt Eyre used to say. ‘We should build our own nests according to the same principles.’ Vitruvius would not have approved of this untidy, inconvenient and ill-designed church.

  Afterwards, the congregation below left first, as befitted the status of those who paid for their seats – they were lower in the church, but superior in everything else. Cat was one of the last to leave. From habit, she lingered for a moment in the porch to give the crowd outside more time to disperse, pretending to study the latest Bill of Mortality that was displayed there. On her first Sunday at Three Cocks Yard, she had been convinced that one of the number murdered that week must be Edward Alderley: and she had both longed and feared that it might be so.

  She heard John’s heavy breathing behind her. He cleared his throat. ‘Would you like to watch the procession on Lord Mayor’s Day?’

  She turned reluctantly to him. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I thought we could go together.’

  ‘Perhaps there won’t be one. No point in having a procession in an ash heap, is there?’

  She turned back to the Bill of Mortality to avoid his beseeching eyes. Beside it was a list of burials in the parish. That was when she saw a name she recognized.

  Jeremiah Sneyd.

  A dizziness mounted to her brain. Her legs trembled, and she leaned against John for support. He said something to her but the words were bereft of meaning.

  ‘Mistress, did you know a man named Sneyd?’

  Mistress Noxon frowned at Cat. ‘What maggot’s in your head now, girl?’

  ‘Have you heard his name, I mean? Recently.’

  ‘No. Should I have?’

  They were walking back from church, a little ahead of the other servants, for Mistress Noxon had wanted to upbraid Cat for distracting John from his duties.

  ‘The name was in the church porch,’ Cat said. ‘On the list of burials. Jeremiah Sneyd.’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I knew a man called Sneyd.’ Cat drew closer, glancing about her to make sure they could not be overheard. She lowered her voice. ‘A comrade of my father’s. He might know where my father is.’

  Mistress Noxon snorted. ‘If he did, he can’t tell you now, can he?’

  ‘But he was married. If his wife’s still living, I could ask her. Perhaps he’s gone abroad again.’

  ‘What can your father do for you now, even if he is still alive?’ Mistress Noxon whispered. ‘He’s wanted for high treason. He’s a Regicide. You’re better off without him.’

  ‘I need to see him first, to be sure. I owe him that.’

  ‘You’re a fool, girl.’

  ‘Can you find out where this Sneyd lived? He used to be a tailor by trade.’

  ‘Why should I trouble to do that?’

  ‘Because you can’t wish me to stay with you for ever.’

  Mistress Noxon screwed up her face. ‘That’s one thing you’re right about. The sooner you go from us, the better. You’re born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards.’

  She smiled at Cat as she spoke, which took at least some of the sting from her words.

  Jeremiah Sneyd had served with Cat’s father throughout the war. He had stayed in the New Model Army for several years longer than Master Lovett, but when he came out the two men had renewed their acquaintance and he used to call at Bow Lane and even dine there. As a child, she remembered watching the two of them pray together – her father tall and thin, and Sneyd small and round.

  Cat had observed him carefully, for they had been starved of strangers, and each one became food for speculation. For all his piety, Sneyd was a greedy man, tearing at his bread and meat with the ferocity of a wild beast, and sucking quantities of beer into his large, fleshy mouth.

  She should have thought of him before. Sneyd had proved his loyalty in the past, and he had seemed as devoted to the cause of King Jesus as her father himself.

  On Monday afternoon, Mistress Noxon waylaid Cat on the way to the necessary house in the yard.

  ‘Sneyd was working as a jobbing tailor,’ she said, without looking at Cat. ‘I talked to the parish clerk, and his mother used to know them. They lived in the Strand once, but they moved up Cursitor Street way. Ramikin Row, wherever that is.’

  ‘But he was a Dissenter, a Fifth Monarchist. Why was his funeral at St Clement Danes, not in Bunhill Fields?’

  ‘Because his widow’s no Dissenter, and St Clement’s was her church before she met him. She thought he’d be closer to God there.’ Mistress Noxon rubbed finger and thumb together. ‘She’ll have made it worth their while or they wouldn’t have agreed. Waste of money, if you ask me. Her wits must be addled.’

  ‘May I look for Mistress Sneyd?’

  ‘When I can spare you. But you must understand this: if they arrest you, I know nothing of who you really are. I took you as a maid out of the kindness of my heart when you washed up on my doorstep during the Fire.’

  Cat bowed her head. ‘I understand.’

  Mistress Noxon flung open the door of the necessary house an
d marched inside. She turned to face Cat, who was already retreating. ‘There’s one other thing you’d better know,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’ll cure your curiosity. They found Sneyd’s body in the Fleet Ditch the week before last. Someone murdered him.’

  After the servants’ dinner on Tuesday, Mistress Noxon told Cat to collect a pair of embroidered gloves that she had ordered from a tailor’s east of Moorfields.

  ‘You may have to wait an hour or two,’ she said, loudly for the benefit of the other servants. ‘But don’t come back without them, Jane. He promised I should have them today. I need them for this evening.’

  The afternoon was grey but mild and dry. Cat made her way swiftly through the streets, cutting through the ruins of the city to Bishopsgate and then up to Moorfields. The gloves were already parcelled up, waiting collection. From Moorfields she made her way west to Chancery Lane and Cursitor Street.

  She bribed a little girl to show her Ramikin Row. She knocked on doors until she found a woman who pointed out the house where Mistress Sneyd lodged and told her that she was working in the yard at the back.

  Cat walked through the passage to the yard. An old woman was sitting on a log in the corner, her eyes cast down, sorting twigs for a broom. Cat stopped in front of her.

  ‘Mistress Sneyd?’

  The woman looked up. Her face was gaunt but she was not as old as Cat had thought. ‘What?’

  ‘I was saddened to hear of your husband’s death.’

  ‘Why? What was he to you?’

  ‘I think my father knew him. Was he in Colonel Harrison’s regiment in the war?’

  ‘Perhaps. Who is your father? Coldridge, is he?’

  The familiar name caught Cat unawares. Coldridge the man, not Coldridge the place? It must surely be her father, using an assumed name. She glanced about her. She and the old woman were alone. If she could trust anyone, it was someone like this. ‘Yes.’

  The woman was looking down at her twigs, her face invisible under her hat.

  ‘Have you seen him lately?’ Cat said.

  Mistress Sneyd shook her head, the hat swaying from side to side.

  ‘Or had your husband?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Mistress? Did you hear me?’

  ‘Go away,’ Mistress Sneyd said softly. ‘Just go.’

  ‘Please,’ Cat said. ‘Listen. If he—’

  Mistress Sneyd looked up at her. Her face was suffused with blood. She opened her mouth, threw back her head and howled like a dog.

  Cat jumped back. She slipped and fell backwards into the gutter. She stood up. Her dress was filthy and damp. She was afraid but she was also growing angry. ‘Did your husband see him? Master Coldridge?’

  ‘Who was your father?’

  ‘I told you – a comrade of your husband’s.’

  ‘I want nothing to do with those fools, or with their daughters.’

  Cat glanced over her shoulder. Half a dozen children had come out from the house and were staring at her.

  ‘Go,’ Mistress Sneyd said softly. ‘Go while you can and never come back. You keep on with your questions, like that young man the other day, but you do nothing. You and your kind have taken everything from me.’

  ‘But all I want—’

  ‘Go.’

  ‘What young man?’ Cat said.

  Mistress Sneyd’s voice rose and from her lips came a spurt of malice: ‘You doxy. I’ll tell them you’re a witch, and you’re trying to put a spell on me. We don’t like witches here. We put them on the kitchen fire.’

  Cat retreated.

  ‘You devil spawn,’ the woman spat out. ‘Your father killed my husband. May he rot in hell, and may you rot with him.’

  She went into the house behind her, slamming the door.

  The children stared at Cat and drew a little closer to her. The oldest of the boys stooped and picked up a stone.

  Cat pulled her cloak around her.

  The first stone hit the wall behind her.

  She broke into a run. The second stone thumped between her shoulder blades. She ran on and on, pushing her way through the crowd. She did not slow to a walk until she reached the bustle of Chancery Lane.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  MASTER HAKESBY HAD not been well during the last few days. The tremor in his hands was worse. He was sleeping badly and, last Friday, he had fallen on the stairs. He was not a drinker, or no more than most men, but Cat could not help wondering if he had the shaking palsy, which had afflicted Great Uncle Eyre in Coldridge.

  In the last year of his life, her uncle had crept miserably about the house with very small steps, complaining of pains in his limbs. His hands had trembled so much that his wife had to feed him in the end. Worst of all, he began to see things that were not there, and to mistake the nature of the real things he saw. Mother Grimes, an old woman on the estate, had made herbal infusions for him. The servants said she was a witch or a wise woman, depending who you talked to. Her infusions eased the pain a little, but they also made the visions worse.

  Cat prayed that this would not be Master Hakesby’s fate. Not for his sake but for hers. She needed him too much. He must not grow ill and die.

  On Monday, the boy who brought the milk said that the apprentices of Fleet Street were out, building a great bonfire in a patch of ground cleared by the Fire in Harp Lane, which lay to the east of Fetter Lane. It was Gunpowder Treason Day, the holiday that commemorated the foiling of the Catholic plot to blow up the King and Parliament more than fifty years ago.

  The apprentices had made an effigy of the Whore of Babylon dressed as the Pope of Rome, complete with his triple tiara and St Peter’s Keys. John begged Mistress Noxon to allow the servants to go out for an hour in the evening, once supper had been served, so they might enjoy the spectacle for themselves.

  ‘You’d like to go, wouldn’t you, Jane?’ he said, turning to Cat, flushing, and making calf’s eyes at her. ‘It’ll be a rare sight. There’ll be stalls and sideshows, I dare say. All the world will be there.’

  ‘I’d like to see it too,’ Margery said.

  ‘You can all go, if you must,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘But only for an hour, and only when you’ve cleared away supper and made things ready for the morning.’

  In the middle of Monday morning, Master Hakesby’s health grew worse. He sent for Mistress Noxon, who went up to see him. Cat wondered if he needed a doctor or at the very least to be bled. But when Mistress Noxon came down, ten minutes later, she told Cat that she should go up to Master Hakesby’s room and work for him for the rest of the morning, and possibly for some of the afternoon as well. Mistress Noxon seemed content with the arrangement, though it would mean extra work for everyone else, which made Cat suspect that Master Hakesby was paying handsomely for it.

  She found him out of bed, and sitting in his elbow chair. He was still in gown and slippers, though, and his face was even gaunter than usual. His skin was dry, and it was flaking like a shower of miniature snow onto the dark green shoulders of his bedgown.

  ‘I am not quite well, Jane,’ he said unnecessarily. His right hand began to twitch of its own volition and he clamped it onto his leg with his left. ‘I have asked Mistress Noxon to allow you to assist me. Bring me the paper from the table, will you? The one on top.’

  She obeyed. It was a rough sketch of an elevation she noticed – its proportions not unlike those of the Banqueting House in Whitehall, but far smaller in scale. The sketch was in pencil, and the lines had skidded a little erratically over the paper, but the sense of it was perfectly clear. Underneath, written in ink, were measurements of the principal dimensions.

  ‘I must have a fair copy by the end of the afternoon,’ Master Hakesby said. ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Her voice was low, and she kept her eyes cast down. But she felt a pulse of excitement begin to beat inside her.

  ‘You will work at the table there, and I shall oversee your work. You should prick the measurements first and then pencil the lin
es in before you use ink. It must be as neat as possible, for it will be seen by the client.’

  ‘The client, sir?’

  ‘A college in Cambridge. This is merely a proposal, which may nor may not lead to a commission. Here you see a side elevation for their new chapel.’

  ‘That Dr Wren is designing?’ she suggested.

  Master Hakesby snorted, and spots of colour appeared in his cheeks. ‘It is more accurate to say that he and I are engaged together on this project.’

  She curtsied and busied herself with her preparations, watching Master Hakesby surreptitiously. He sat back in his chair, rubbing his forehead, which caused another shower of snowflakes. A muscle jumped in his cheek. A moment later, he rose from his chair with some difficulty and shuffled with unsteady steps into his closet. After a long silence, she heard him relieving himself.

  When he came back, he inspected her progress so far and seemed satisfied with it. While she continued, he took up a well-worn book and rested it on the arm of his chair. He appeared to be reading, but did not often turn a page. When she was passing his chair to fetch a knife to sharpen the pencil, she glanced down at the volume. She saw without surprise that it was the De Architectura of Vitruvius, Aunt Eyre’s favourite book. It was a good omen.

  Firmitas, utilitas, venustas, she thought. Buildings should be like the nests of birds and bees.

  The rest of the morning passed pleasantly. The work absorbed Cat, drawing her into a place where both worries and duties evaporated, leaving only the whisper of the pencil on paper, Master Hakesby’s breathing, and the plan taking shape on the table before her.

  At dinnertime, he told her to go downstairs to fetch him a tray. ‘You may have your meal yourself, after that, and then we shall start again this afternoon.’

  ‘Sir?’ she said as she was tidying the table to make room for the tray. ‘Is the cornice a little too ornamented?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ He sounded irritated. He pulled himself up from the chair and came to look at the design. ‘What in God’s name can you know of such things?’