The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  Alsatia held a particular attraction for its inhabitants that pushed all its drawbacks into insignificance. The entire precinct had been declared a sanctuary in the Middle Ages. Though the monastery had long gone, the right of sanctuary remained. It was a liberty, which meant that in legal terms it was quite separate from the great city that surrounded it.

  The inhabitants were rogues, murderers, thieves, beggars, and whores. They united against intruders, fighting off any attempt to infringe the ancient right of sanctuary. No magistrates dared to go there, for they would be beaten or even murdered if they did. Even the King’s guards were wary of entering Whitefriars.

  Margaret’s husband was not a rogue, only a man who had had the misfortune to lose part of a leg in the defence of his country. But he was also a bankrupt, because the Navy owed him eighteen months’ worth of back pay, and as such he was liable to arrest if he ventured abroad. That was why they lived in Alsatia, where he was out of the bailiffs’ reach.

  ‘People leave us alone now,’ she said to me, and there was a note of pride in her voice. ‘Alsatia’s not so bad when you get used to it. Sam may only have one leg now, but he has a dagger and a pistol. He cut off a man’s finger just after we moved there.’

  So that was Margaret Witherdine. If I had thought about her, I would have thought her a woman of no importance to me, unless her cooperation were for some reason temporarily convenient for the discharge of my duties. In the same way, I’m sure, I was a man of no importance to her, except insofar as I could help her to earn the few weekly pennies that she took back to her feckless husband.

  All that changed when my father went missing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  MY FATHER WENT missing on Wednesday, just over a week after my return from Coldridge.

  Mistress Newcomb gave me the news when I brought the latest batch of corrected proofs to her husband. My father had settled in the parlour after dinner, she told me, as he usually did, and she had left him to sleep. But when she looked in an hour later, she found he had gone.

  Her fingers screwed up her apron. ‘What could I do, sir? I couldn’t stay with him. The children were in a pickle and the maid’s ill. Margaret’s not here today and the scullery girl’s a fool.’

  The door had been bolted, but my father had undone it and gone out. Mistress Newcomb had sent the scullery maid and her husband’s labourer to scour the streets, but they had found nothing. She had sent them out again, and they were still looking.

  I bit back my anger. I knew it was unjust to blame her. The poor woman had enough to do without keeping watch over my father. She was kinder to him than Mistress Ralston had been in Chelsea, more willing to endure his frailties. But there was a limit to her patience, and I did not want to cross it, for then my father and I would be homeless again. On the other hand, I could not place him in confinement in his own home. After his long years in prison, he hated above all things to be locked in.

  ‘I’ll search for him myself,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, he can’t be far.’

  I tried to speak cheerfully but I was full of foreboding. My father had the body of an old man and the mind of a child. He would fall easy prey to malice or accident. To make matters worse, I was in a hurry, for Master Williamson wanted to dictate some letters, and he was determined that we should do them this afternoon.

  I walked up to the Strand and paused on the corner, where the alley from the Savoy met the main road. The rain drizzled from a grey sky. Traffic roared and clattered past me in either direction, the wheels and hooves throwing a spray of mud and water over the foot passengers.

  A cutting wind was coming up from the river, growing more vicious and forceful as the alley funnelled it up to the road. It snatched at men’s hats and wigs, and sent women’s skirts twitching and flying as if each of them contained a small, manic creature frolicking in the darkness within.

  Which way would my father go? I tried to put myself into his poor confused mind. This part of London had been untouched by the Fire. The buildings were much the same as they had been in Cromwell’s time. True, there were more people about; their clothes were gaudier; their voices louder. And the women adorned themselves and displayed their charms in a way they would not have dared to ten years earlier. There were more shops as well, and more bustle and excitement.

  But the Strand was still recognizable, still part of his London. If he had set out towards Whitehall, to the Banqueting House, I might well have seen him on my way from there. On balance, I thought it more likely he would have followed the long-entrenched geography of habit, and set out for home.

  Or rather where his home had been – the house and workshop in Pater Noster Row. It had not been his for six years. After my father’s arrest, his landlord, a merchant in Leadenhall, had leased it to another printer, a man who handled broadsides and bawdy ballads. The new tenant had bought from the Crown the confiscated tools and materials of my father’s trade – his cases of type, his inks and his stocks of paper.

  So I walked eastwards along the south side of the Strand towards the City, shouldering my way through the throng. If I were right, and he had gone there, God alone knew what he would make of the place where he had lived and worked. The flames had burned with particular fury in Pater Noster Row, for it was close to the inferno of St Paul’s.

  I passed under Temple Bar and entered the territory of the Fire. The ruins stretched away from me almost as far as I could see. Pushing through the crowd, I walked at a fast pace, almost a run, following the slope of Fleet Street down towards the Fleet Ditch and Bridewell.

  I felt a hand on my arm. I spun round, my back to the wall, my free hand diving for my dagger.

  ‘Master—’

  I let my hand fall to my side. ‘Margaret – what the devil are you doing here?’

  Her face was red, bathed with sweat. ‘Thank God you’re come, sir.’

  ‘What is it?’ I snapped.

  ‘Your father.’ Her hand tightened on my arm. ‘He’s here.’

  ‘Where?’

  She waved at the ruins behind her.

  It was only then that I realized where we were standing. ‘Ram Alley?’

  It was one of the most notorious thoroughfares of Alsatia. It lay on the western side of Whitefriars, near to the Temple where the lawyers nested like magpies and grew rich from the follies of men. We were standing at its mouth, where its northern end met Fleet Street.

  Margaret caught her breath. Two men were waiting in a doorway not fifty yards away. At that point Ram Alley was barely a couple of paces wide. The doorway lacked a door and the house behind it lacked a roof. The men were dressed in rusty black and armed with long swords. They were tall, with great bellies drooping over their belts, and slightly bow-legged. Former Ironsides, I guessed, run to seed and as vicious as scalded rats.

  ‘Is my father … safe?’

  She touched my arm again, but gently this time, for reassurance. ‘He’s all right, sir, as God’s my witness. At least he was. I left him with my Sam, and he’ll deal with anyone who comes close. But Master Marwood can’t walk too well. He’s hurt his ankle.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He came here to look for me, sir. He … he wanted us to go for a walk.’ Margaret swallowed. ‘To Whitehall again.’

  To the Banqueting House, she meant. To the place of blood and ashes where they had made England ready for King Jesus.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re not to blame,’ I said. No one was to blame, not even my poor father. ‘We must bring him home. Was he attacked?’ I glanced up the alley, at the waiting men. ‘By them?’

  She shook her head. ‘I think not. Someone picked his pocket, I expect, but that’s all.’

  They would have found precious little there. ‘He probably didn’t notice,’ I said. ‘How did he hurt himself?’

  ‘A boy said he was lying in the gutter. He was calling my name. So the boy came for me, thinking he was my father.’ She sniffed
. ‘So I said he was. Safer.’

  I took a couple of steps into the alley, but she pulled me back.

  ‘Oh, dear God, please be careful, sir.’

  The two men ahead were staring at us, their thumbs hooked in their belts. I said, ‘Shall I fetch help?’

  ‘Better not. They might let you in, as you’re with me, but if you bring others with you, they’ll take you for bailiffs or constables and rouse the neighbourhood.’ She lowered her voice. ‘They killed a man last week. The body went out with the tide.’ She looked up at me. ‘I’ll tell them that you’re my brother, sir. If you don’t object.’

  As far as I was concerned, she could have said I was the Bishop of Rome if it stood a chance of making those two bullies look kindly on me. ‘I must find my father. Then we’ll decide what to do.’

  ‘Your pardon, sir, but it will be better if I take your arm. To make us seem friendly. Otherwise they might take you for a law officer.’

  Margaret’s hand gripped my arm. We walked into Ram Alley. Her arm trembled against mine, but she marched forward, drawing me with her, as if she owned the whole of Alsatia.

  There was a screech of metal. One of the two men had drawn his sword. He touched the tip of the long, heavy blade against the wall of the house opposite him, blocking our path. It was an old cavalryman’s broadsword with a basket hilt.

  ‘And what have we here?’ he asked. His hat was tilted to the left. His right ear had been reduced to a stump.

  Margaret dipped in a curtsy. ‘This is my brother, sir.’

  ‘We want no riff-raff here,’ the other said, fingering the hilt of his dagger. ‘We’re very particular.’

  ‘He’s come to fetch my poor father. He’s been taken ill.’

  They looked at me with disdain.

  ‘Indeed, sirs,’ I said. ‘He is not well.’

  The second man took the edge of my cloak between finger and thumb and rubbed it, assessing the cloth. It was the one that smelled of fish. ‘Poor stuff,’ he said, and I could not disagree with him.

  ‘Ill, eh?’ the man with the sword said. ‘Then we must drink the old gentleman’s health. It is our Christian duty to aid the sick. By a lucky chance, young sir, the Blood-Bowl Tavern is but a hop and skip away. We shall be there in a flash.’

  ‘Of course.’ I reached for my purse. ‘But my father is so ill I must go to him at once, sir. I beg you to excuse me. But would you do me the honour to drink his health on my behalf and my sister’s as well as your own?’

  It was no time for half measures. I unlaced the purse and held it out to them. The swordsman’s friend took it and upturned it over his outstretched hand. I watched in silent agony as my entire stock of ready money – almost thirty shillings in all, more than I had had for months – fell chinking into his palm.

  ‘A pleasure to deal with such an open-handed gentleman.’ The swordsman dropped the blade and thrust it into its long scabbard. He swept off his greasy hat and bowed to Margaret with the careful precision of the moderately drunk. ‘My compliments to Captain Pegleg, mistress,’ he said.

  They stood aside, each with his back to a wall, forcing us to pass in single file between them. The man with the dagger put out his boot as I went by, causing me to stumble and almost fall.

  ‘Careful, young sir,’ he called after me. ‘The ground’s as slippery as that whore’s arse.’

  When we were past them, Margaret squeezed my arm again. ‘God be praised, sir,’ she murmured. ‘It could have gone either way. But they were kind-humoured today.’ She snorted, a sort of laugh that had nothing to do with amusement. ‘You did well to give them your purse.’

  My arm was trembling, and my forehead was prickling with sweat as she guided me through a network of lanes and courts. I lost my sense of direction almost immediately, for there was nothing to help me orientate myself apart from the occasional glimpse of the river.

  We came to a small yard surrounded by crumbling buildings of brick, stained with soot. A layer of ashes covered the flagstones beneath our feet. A boy of four or five years was squatting in the dirt and relieving himself. He wore nothing but a shirt, and his arms and legs looked like chicken bones. He held out a cupped hand for alms but otherwise ignored us.

  ‘That door there,’ Margaret said. ‘Home.’

  She led me through an archway into one of the buildings and opened a door into a ground-floor room barely six feet square. The only window was tiny, and a rag had been nailed over it in place of glass. To my immense relief, the first thing I saw in the gloom was my father, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Beside him, was another man. His right leg had been taken off below the knee, and he wore a wooden stump in its place.

  My father squinted at me in the doorway. ‘James,’ he said pettishly. ‘Where have you been? I wish you’d been here hours ago. This gentleman is Samuel. He and I have been discoursing on the probable nature of Armageddon, and it would have nourished your soul.’

  ‘Is all well?’ Margaret whispered.

  ‘Also, on the subject of nourishment,’ my father went on in the same irritable voice, ‘I find that I’m hungry.’

  ‘Nobody’s been in since you left,’ Sam said.

  ‘We met Rock and Captain Boyd in Ram Alley,’ Margaret said. ‘Master Marwood gave them his purse.’

  ‘Shame. But wise.’

  The sailor stared at me. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom. I made out a long, unsheathed dagger on the platform beside him. On his other side, close to his hand, was a shape I took to be his pistol, partly concealed by the folds of his coat. Next to it was a small earthenware bottle.

  ‘Thank you for your kindness to my father, sir.’

  ‘And I thank you for yours to my wife.’

  I expected Margaret’s husband to be little better than a distressed animal, a drunken wreck wholly dependent on his wife. Samuel Witherdine was certainly a cripple, and perhaps he drank too much, but there was nothing about him that asked for pity.

  ‘You want to get him out of here,’ he said. ‘This is no place for an old man. Not like him.’

  I addressed my father: ‘Can you walk, sir?’

  He stared at me in surprise. ‘Of course I can walk. Is it suppertime?’

  ‘Not without help,’ Samuel said. ‘He’s got a wrench or a sprain to his left ankle. But you’ll get him up to Fleet Street between you, and then you can find a hackney or a chair. I’ll come with you, just in case.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go yet,’ my father said. ‘We haven’t finished our discourse. Could supper be sent for?’

  ‘Another time, sir,’ Samuel said, and his voice had become gentler. ‘If you would be so kind.’

  My father’s face brightened. ‘We can sing psalms.’

  ‘Indeed we can.’

  Margaret helped her husband to rise and gave him his crutch. He stuffed the pistol in the pocket of his long coat and put the dagger in his belt.

  When we left the lodging, Samuel hopped behind us. He was marvellously agile, and could have made faster progress than the rest of us despite the crutch. My father was weary, and he hung between Margaret and me, making little effort to help, and squealing with pain when something jarred his injured ankle. Trailing behind us all came the little boy, sucking his fingers as if he hoped against hope to derive nourishment from them.

  We took a different, shorter route up to Fleet Street from the one we had come by. No one tried to stop us, though many watched us go. Perhaps Sam’s presence deterred them, or perhaps word had got about that we had already paid our dues to the bullies of Ram Alley.

  For the first time in my life, the racket in Fleet Street was a foretaste of paradise. Margaret and I reached the corner, with my father dangling between us. Samuel lingered behind, thirty yards into the safety of Alsatia.

  The old man became more lively when he saw where he was. I propped him against the wall, with Margaret to keep him company and stop him from straying. It was only a short distance to the Savoy but I did not think h
e could manage it, even with our help. I looked about for a vacant hackney coach or chair to take him back. I would have to beg a loan from the Newcombs to pay for it.

  Behind me, my father was talking to Margaret, his tongue suddenly unleashed.

  ‘You see, my dear, London is a perfect Gomorrah, another City of the Plain, a place of luxury and sin. Tom Lovett was in the right of it. It is too wicked to last. The Lord will destroy it.’

  I turned round sharply. ‘What did you say? Tom who?’

  My father raised his watery eyes to me. ‘Tom Lovett. Fire and brimstone will not be the half of it, he said. He is a most godly man, in his way, though a little rough in his manner.’

  ‘I didn’t know you knew him, sir.’

  ‘He’s one of the saved. I used to see him sometimes at meetings in the old days. The room we used was in Watling Street, not a stone’s throw from his house in Bow Lane. Tom says the return of this King cannot last. God will blot him out, sooner or later. Charles will go the way of his father, the man of blood.’

  I heard my father’s words but my understanding lagged a few seconds behind. ‘Do you mean you’ve seen Tom Lovett recently? Since the Restoration?’

  His attention was wandering towards two brightly painted prostitutes who were approaching, scanning the crowd for possible customers. ‘Recently? Yes – quite by chance. Didn’t I say?’ He waved behind us, towards the alley where Sam was still waiting. ‘I saw Tom in there.’

  ‘This afternoon? Are you saying you’ve seen him this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, I told you. Why are you so foolish today?’ My father frowned as a memory passed like a shadow through the ruins of his mind. ‘Indeed, it was Tom Lovett who made me fall in the gutter. We conversed only for a moment. Then he pushed me down when I tried to follow him. Now why would Tom do that?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  NEXT MORNING, I still did not know what to do for the best.