The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  My duty to my masters was clear enough, that I should reveal what my father had told me yesterday about meeting Lovett in Alsatia; it was up to them to decide what to do with the information. But my duty to my father was opposed to that.

  If I told Williamson and Chiffinch, they would interrogate my father to see if they could squeeze more information from him. They might quite possibly imprison him again on suspicion of conspiring with a Regicide. They would comb Alsatia for traces of Thomas Lovett, though I had not the faintest idea how they could do that discreetly.

  I left my father in the parlour with strict instructions not to stir until I returned. He would do as I asked, if only because he had no choice – he was still lame from yesterday’s adventure in Alsatia, and he could hobble only with difficulty, and with the aid of a stick.

  As I had expected, Margaret was in the passage leading to the Newcombs’ lodgings, waiting to receive the day’s deliveries. I thought it wiser to meet her as if by chance, rather than to summon her, which might arouse Mistress Newcomb’s curiosity. Mistress Newcomb was not quite happy with me, because I had borrowed a pound from her husband yesterday to tide me over after Rock and Captain Boyd had taken the contents of my purse.

  I drew Margaret aside and gave her two shillings, which drove the colour to her cheeks and prompted a flurry of undeserved thanks.

  ‘By the way, do you remember what my father was saying yesterday just before we found the hackney?’ I asked.

  ‘That London was Gomorrah, sir. And that God would destroy it.’ She glanced up at me with a hint of a smile. ‘If you ask me, God’s already done half the job.’

  ‘And …?’ I prompted.

  She hesitated, her eyes falling. ‘And something foolish about the King.’

  Instinctively we both looked up and down the passage to make sure we were alone.

  ‘His mind was rambling, of course,’ I said. ‘He didn’t know what he was saying. But do you perhaps recall him mentioning a name?’

  ‘The man who told him about … about Gomorrah? Tom something, was it?’

  I lowered my voice. ‘Tom Lovett. My father thought he’d met him in Alsatia.’ It was my turn to hesitate. ‘An old comrade, I believe. But Lovett did not wish for his company and pushed him over. That’s what caused the sprained ankle.’ Another hesitation. ‘According to my father.’

  Margaret nodded, and I knew that she understood me. My father was too confused, and his memory too erratic, for us to be sure of anything he told us.

  ‘I wonder …’ I stopped, for her sharp little eyes were making me uncomfortable. ‘That is to say, I should like to know whether this Lovett is really there or not. Would you find out for me, if you can? Without his being aware of it, or anyone else.’

  ‘What’s this man look like then?’ she demanded, as if I’d asked her the most ordinary thing in the world.

  I felt suddenly foolish. ‘I can’t tell you. He’s in middle age, I believe, not as old as my father at any rate. He’s a Puritan by persuasion, though he may not advertise that.’

  ‘I’ll ask Samuel,’ she said. ‘That’ll be best.’

  My face must have betrayed what was in my mind.

  ‘Just because Sam’s a cripple,’ she said, firing up, ‘it doesn’t mean he’s lost his wits. Those Dutch bastards took off his leg with their cannonball, not his head.’

  I bowed my head. ‘Pray ask Samuel. Whatever you think best.’

  I hoped that time and Margaret between them would resolve the matter with the minimum of help from me, that Lovett would betray himself by his actions, or simply disappear. Fear makes fools of us all.

  At Whitehall, Williamson had the toothache, which brought out the bully in him. I spent the day copying the letters for his correspondents, the routine ones that went out to the provinces with the Gazette. I dined at the palace and continued at my labours for most of the afternoon.

  It was a tedious day, and I was glad when it ended. I walked back to our lodgings. It was raining. At this hour, the streets were still busy, and there was a particular bustle outside the arcades of the New Exchange in the Strand, where the rich and fashionable clustered around the shops like wasps around a bowl of honey. The double galleries were packed with customers and their servants. In the road outside, their coaches had almost brought traffic to a standstill.

  A servant came up to me as I was making my way through the pedestrians. He bowed very civilly and asked if I was Master Marwood.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘My mistress desires to speak with you.’

  He was wearing livery, I noticed, marked with bold vertical stripes of black and yellow. Alderley’s livery. I had a sudden memory of Layne’s body in the cellar of Scotland Yard all those weeks ago, and Williamson saying in his grating voice, ‘It’s the clothes that matter.’

  The man gestured at one of the coaches drawn up at the side of the road. I had passed it a moment ago without paying any attention. I saw now that Henry Alderley’s badge was painted on the door: the pelican plucking the flesh from her own breast to feed her young. In my family, I thought grimly, it was the other way round.

  He led me through the throng and opened the coach door. Mistress Alderley was sitting facing towards the horses, with her maid opposite her. I bowed low.

  She inclined her head in reply. ‘Master Marwood. A word, if you please. Come out of the rain.’ She waved a gloved finger at her maid. ‘Go and enquire when the necklace will be ready.’

  The footman let down the steps and handed down the maid; she gave me a sour look as she passed. I climbed into the coach and took her seat. The footman closed the door and I was alone with Olivia Alderley in a dim, sweetly scented box. I was obliged to hold my legs rigidly against the door to prevent my knees from brushing the skirt of her dress.

  ‘Well,’ she said softly. ‘This is a fortunate chance.’

  I said nothing. The rain pattered on the roof of the coach.

  ‘Except it isn’t a chance at all. I was at Whitehall this afternoon and I saw you leaving.’

  ‘Did you see Master Chiffinch at Whitehall?’ I said. Or the King?

  ‘I must see you on Sunday.’ She spoke as one speaks to a servant. ‘At the same time, the same place.’

  ‘If it pleases you, madam.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was brisk, with nothing flirtatious in it. ‘It pleases me.’

  ‘I did not find her,’ I blurted. ‘Your niece, that is. Catherine Lovett.’

  She glanced at me briefly. ‘I know.’

  She tapped the glass beside her. The footman opened the door. I mumbled farewell. She murmured something in reply but I did not catch it.

  My father was dozing by the fire and Mistress Newcomb engaged in preparing supper when I arrived. While I was waiting, the maid came in to tell me that Margaret was outside and begged the favour of a word.

  I found her among the shadows in the yard by the kitchen door. It was dark now, and the only light filtered through the cracks of the kitchen shutters.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked in an undertone.

  Her face was a grey blur in the dusk. ‘There was a man, sir.’ She spoke in a whisper and I had to strain to catch the words. ‘Might be Lovett. Hanging Sword Alley, Salisbury Court end.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Tall and well set up, wore his own hair. Samuel used to see him in Blood-Bowl Tavern sometimes. Never in liquor, though. He drank a little ale, warmed himself at the fire, read the newspaper.’

  ‘Could Samuel describe him further?’ I asked.

  ‘No meat on him.’ She spoke in short, jerky sentences, as if words were rationed, were precious in themselves. ‘Forty-five, maybe, fifty? Plainly dressed, and wore a sword. People left him alone.’

  ‘Why was he there? Did Samuel say?’

  ‘You don’t ask people that in Alsatia,’ she said, with a note of scorn in her voice. ‘Not unless they want to tell you. Samuel thought he’d fallen on hard times – that he’d known better thing
s. Plenty of men like that in the Blood-Bowl, of course, but he wasn’t like them, Sam said – this one knew what he was about. Didn’t seem short of money, though. No one troubled him.’

  ‘Where can I find him exactly? Which house?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s not there any more. Sam talked to the man who keeps the house.’ She paused and sniffed, lifting her chin at me as if to emphasize that Samuel had discovered all this, despite his shortcomings in the matter of legs. ‘He left last night. No warning.’ She snorted with what sounded like genuine amusement. ‘He left money with the servant to cover what he owed. Paid up to the last farthing. No more, no less. He’d been keeping his own reckoning. Not many do that, especially in Alsatia. Not many pay up unless they have to, either.’

  I said, ‘He must have had a name.’

  ‘It wasn’t Lovett. He called himself Master Coldridge.’

  I let out the air from my lungs in a rush.

  ‘One other thing, sir.’ Her voice became a whisper. ‘Sam heard he’d killed a man near Bridewell.’

  I felt a prickle of excitement, or perhaps fear. The footbridge over the Fleet was beside Bridewell. The place where Jeremiah Sneyd’s body had been found.

  At that moment the kitchen door opened, and Mistress Newcomb appeared on the step. Behind her was one of the apprentices, with a staff in one hand and a lantern in the other. ‘Who’s there?’ she demanded. ‘Show yourself.’

  ‘It’s nothing, mistress,’ I said. ‘Only Margaret – there was a difficulty with tomorrow’s deliveries, but we’ve dealt with it now.’

  I unbolted the yard gate for Margaret to leave.

  ‘That’s why they left him alone,’ she whispered as she passed me. ‘Even Rock and Captain Boyd in Ram Alley.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ON FRIDAY MORNING I had business for Master Williamson in the City. On my way back I passed along Cheapside. Behind me, the bells of the City’s surviving churches were chiming their many versions of eleven o’clock.

  Cheapside, once the finest street in London, had been reduced to rubble and ash. A path just wide enough for a wagon to pass had been cleared in the roadway. On either side, labourers were working among ruins. They were not trying to rebuild houses yet, rather to bring some sort of order to the chaos of destruction. Booths selling beer had sprung up at street corners, to slake the thirst of workers and passers-by. When the debris was disturbed, the ashes rose into the air and clung to the back of throats and coated the nostrils.

  In a strange fashion, however, Cheapside was busy enough, though not in the way it had been before the Fire. Surveyors were at work, measuring the ground. The task of rebuilding the City was fraught with legal problems, not least that of establishing the precise boundaries of thousands of freeholds which had developed over centuries; and many of the title deeds had been inaccurate, or lost, or destroyed in the Fire.

  A few former residents inhabited what had once been their cellars, and troops of scavengers were still picking over what was left. Saddest of all were the men and women who wandered the ruins with dazed expressions on their faces. I supposed that they were searching for their homes or their loved ones, or perhaps for both. Scraps of paper had been nailed to the remains of doorposts or weighted down with stones in the shelter of brick hearths. Messages for lost children, lost parents and lost friends were scrawled on them, some of which were still legible after weeks of exposure to the autumn weather.

  On the south side of the street a small crowd clustered around the booth that had been set up among the graves in front of the ruins of Bow Church. I stopped to buy some beer. While I was waiting to be served, there was a stir along Cheapside, caused by three gentlemen walking abreast along the street, with a servant ahead of them to clear the way. All at once I forgot my thirst. The servant was in livery, with broad, vertical stripes of black and yellow on his coat and breeches.

  Alderley’s colours.

  The man himself was behind, striding along as if the street were empty. Mundy, the steward, was on his right. On his left was a younger man, heavy featured and richly dressed, with a sword swinging at his side. He glanced at the beer booth as they passed with a single, baleful eye. He wore a black patch over the other eye.

  It could only be Edward Alderley, the son whom Jem had stabbed, set on fire and left for dead.

  The party turned into the lane running south beside the church. All at once the coincidence struck me. This was Bow Lane: where Lovett had had his house and yard before it was confiscated; and it wasn’t far from the bridge by Bridewell, where they had found Jeremiah Sneyd’s body in the Fleet Ditch, and only a little further away from Alsatia, where Master Coldridge had lodged in Hanging Sword Alley until Wednesday evening.

  After a moment or two, I followed Henry Alderley and his party. Bow Lane was still a ravine strewn with ashes and rubbish, with charred ruins rising on either side of it. I picked my way slowly, making a detour to avoid a party of labourers who were making safe the frontage of an inn. Wisps of smoke curled into the air, rising from something still smouldering deep in the ruins. On the corner of Watling Street, a surveyor and his men were measuring the dimensions of a building that had once stood there.

  I was in time to see the four men turning right into an alley before the corner. I asked one of the labourers who had lived there before the Fire.

  ‘Don’t know, master.’ He wiped the dust from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘There’s a mason’s yard down there. What’s left of it.’

  I walked down the lane. The alley was partly blocked by a fallen chimney. As for Lovett’s house, it no longer existed in any form that resembled a dwelling.

  The building had been constructed mainly of wood over a low brick base, an irony for a mason’s house. The chimneystacks had fallen. In the yard behind the house had been a row of wooden sheds and open shelters, whose outlines could be traced by the blackened stumps of the surviving posts that had supported their roofs. There were still stacks of stone within, them. Much of it had been neatly dressed, but the heat of the Fire had cracked and calcined it.

  The Alderleys, their steward and their servant were in the yard. Alderley must have heard my footsteps, for he turned and stared at me. Then, to my surprise, he raised his hand and beckoned me over. I had not seen him since that chance meeting in the Matted Gallery at Whitehall.

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ He frowned at me across a heap of broken tiles. ‘Master Williamson’s clerk? Wait – the name’s on the tip of my tongue. Marpool – Mardy – no, I have it: Marwood. What are you doing here, Marwood? Have you a message from your master?’

  I bowed to him. ‘No, sir. I’m on my way to the Savoy.’

  The frown deepened. This was not the most direct route to the Savoy. But I did not want to admit my interest in the Lovetts to Master Alderley. As far as I knew, he still believed that the disappearance of his niece was a secret confined within the walls of Barnabas Place. On the other hand, I did want to know what he and his son were doing here. A gull from the river swooped low over Watling Street and gave me inspiration.

  ‘Master Williamson has a share in a warehouse in Thames Street, sir,’ I said. ‘I had a mind to walk down and see how the work is going on with the clearance.’

  Alderley shrugged. ‘At a snail’s pace no doubt. As it is everywhere.’

  Edward Alderley turned and stared at me with his single, baleful eye. ‘Not just a snail, sir,’ he said, still looking at me, though the words were intended for his father. ‘A damned, snivelling, sleeping snail.’

  ‘Very droll, sir,’ said the third man, the Alderleys’ steward.

  ‘Nothing droll about it in the world,’ Edward snapped, rounding on him. ‘You should know that as well as anyone, Mundy.’

  The steward flushed and turned away, his assurance cracking like an eggshell.

  ‘Does Williamson have a share in the freehold of this warehouse?’ Edward asked.

  ‘I believe not, sir,’ I said. ‘Only the lease.’ />
  ‘Then he’s fortunate indeed.’ He swung back to his father. ‘I cannot believe those rascally judges should have made such an unjust decision, sir. Everyone knows that that damned Frenchman no more lit the fire than I did.’

  I knew then what was on their minds. Parliament had asked the judges to advise on a point of law: whether the landlords or the tenants should be responsible for rebuilding property destroyed by Fire. On Monday it had become known that the judges had decided that tenants should only be responsible if they or their neighbours had started the Fire. But since a Frenchman had admitted the crime and been executed for it last week, it followed that the Fire was due to the action of an enemy. In that case, they ruled, Parliament should ensure that landlords bore the expense. It was openly said at Whitehall and Westminster, and even in the City, that the Frenchman, one Hulbert, was mad and his testimony against himself could not be trusted. But he made a convenient culprit.

  Mundy gave a discreet cough and turned to Master Alderley. ‘Would you like me to arrange for this site to be measured and cleared as well, sir? It may take a little time – there is so much to be done.’

  Before I could stop myself, I let out my breath sharply. Edward glanced at me with his single eye, registering my surprise. I cleared my throat, hoping he would assume that this was the reason for my behaviour.

  ‘It would be wise to do as much as we can before the onset of winter,’ Mundy was saying in his droning voice. ‘Snow and frost will make the job twice as hard and twice as expensive.’

  ‘Very well,’ Master Alderley said. ‘Add it to the list.’

  I dug the toe of my shoe into a heap of ash beside me, struggling to work out the implications of what I had learned. Little was recognizable among the rubbish. Among the ash were fragments of iron, distorted into fantastical shapes. Once perhaps they had been chisels and axe-heads before the alchemy of fire had robbed them of form and purpose. Here and there were drops of lead, molten then resolidified. I even glimpsed a fragment of china, perhaps from a cup, a sign that the last mistress of the house had had luxurious tastes.