The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘No – but possibly about her father. I think a man might have been concealed by an old woman, a servant’s widow, who lives in a wood near Coldridge. Afterwards I was ill for several days, too sick to move. I believe she had me poisoned, to give the man time to escape.’

  ‘Master Chiffinch knows? And the King?’

  I nodded.

  ‘That’s all they care about,’ Mistress Alderley said with a touch of anger. ‘This man Lovett. They don’t give a fig for Catherine, except as bait. Find her, they think, and they find him.’

  I wondered if Chiffinch or the King had told her that Master Alderley had contrived to sell Coldridge. I dared not ask. I was on delicate ground. However one looked at it, there was something underhand about the sale, even if Alderley had had his niece’s best interests at heart.

  ‘I have a kindness for her,’ she went on, plucking the words one by one as if they did not come easily to her. ‘She is a child still, an innocent. She is not like a girl of her age should be at all – she cares nothing for a new dress or a fine gentleman. All she wants to do is scribble away at drawing buildings that never were and never could be. I cannot help feeling …’

  ‘What, madam?’

  She glared at me. ‘If you must know, I blame myself for her flight.’ She took a deep breath and went on in a quieter voice: ‘No, that’s foolish, of course – I merely meant that I might possibly have prevented it. Catherine tried to confide in me on the evening before she left and I – well, I did not brush her aside exactly, but I turned the talk to other things. I knew she wasn’t happy at the prospect of her marriage, and she did not care for Sir Denzil. But I thought time would mend all, and besides it was such a splendid match for her, and her uncle wished for it so much. And now, the longer she is away, the more I feel certain that some terrible fate has befallen her. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? She’s so alone. So defenceless. And God is my witness, sir, I know what that feels like.’

  Mistress Alderley turned her head away from me.

  I thought that she had revealed more of herself than she had intended. ‘Perhaps she has found her father and they have fled abroad. Perhaps—’

  ‘Do you think I haven’t thought of all this?’ she burst out. ‘But “perhaps” is not good enough. Besides, her father is no fit guardian for her.’

  ‘What has Master Lovett done, madam?’

  ‘Why, he’s a Regicide. Everyone knows that.’

  I nodded, as if satisfied, but I knew from what the King had said that there was something more to Lovett, something even worse.

  I said, ‘What does Master Alderley say?’

  Again, her lips twisted. ‘Nothing of consequence. He keeps his own counsel but I believe he has no more idea where she is than I do. He – he is very angry with her, I’m afraid. He was quite determined on this marriage, and he feared her running off would ruin all.’

  Now of course it no longer mattered. Sir Denzil was no longer in a position to marry anyone. It occurred to me that his death might not be wholly unwelcome to Master Alderley, who would no longer have to account for his unauthorized sale of his niece’s dowry.

  ‘Our dogs are savage brutes, you know,’ she went on, seemingly at a tangent. ‘My husband cannot take chances, not with his strong room on the premises. They have the run of the house at night, and during the day they are mostly chained up. They would kill a stranger they found as soon as look at him. But they are well trained – they are perfectly restrained with our friends, once they know them, and to the family they are as meek as lambs.’

  I remembered my first visit to the Alderleys’ house, when the mastiffs had licked the blood in the yard with such enthusiasm after Jem’s broken body had been dragged away.

  She glanced sideways at me through her lashes. ‘One of them broke loose on Primrose Hill. Something excited it. Edward had dismounted. The dog wouldn’t answer to his call. So Sir Denzil rode after it. When Edward got there, Sir Denzil was dying. The dog was nearby. Its leash was looped over a branch. It must have seen the murder.’

  I saw her implication. ‘Could the leash have snagged on the branch by accident?’

  ‘How should I know?’ she said. ‘I wasn’t there.’

  The touch of petulance took me unawares and made me smile. It made her seem like an ordinary mortal, and I liked her the more for it.

  ‘It’s no laughing matter,’ she snapped.

  ‘I beg your pardon, madam. So if the leash was looped intentionally over the branch, that suggests …’

  My voice tailed away. She ran the tip of her forefinger over her forehead. I stared at the floor. Anywhere but at her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It suggests that the dog knew the murderer. More than that, it suggests the dog would obey him.’

  Him. The word lay between us and made others. Or her.

  ‘But that’s obviously nonsense,’ she said. ‘No one at Barnabas Place would wish Sir Denzil dead. So the leash must have caught on the branch by accident.’

  It struck me we were having two conversations now: the words that were said, and the words that were intended to be understood. ‘Didn’t the dogs pick up the man’s scent?’ I asked.

  Her face was expressionless in the candlelight. ‘Edward kept them close in case the assault was the work of a band of robbers. He thought they might return. Besides, mastiffs are guard dogs – they aren’t trained for the chase.’

  Once again: the words said did not quite correspond to the words meant. She thought her stepson a coward.

  ‘Have they searched the hill?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. The magistrates sent men up – they found nothing out of the ordinary. Master Alderley sent our steward and two servants as well. The only thing of note was the cloak that Edward found. Or rather the dogs found it – it was in the hedge. It’s possible it was the murderer’s.’

  ‘A cloak, madam? What was it like?’

  ‘Poor quality,’ she said. ‘Far too light for November. It’s rather shabby and there’s a tear in the lining.’

  ‘What colour?’

  She looked at me, and for an instant the tip of her tongue appeared between her lips. She looked like a child engrossed in a difficult calculation. ‘What is it? You look … surprised.’

  ‘I’ve come across a cloak before,’ I said. ‘That’s all. The colour, madam?’

  ‘It’s grey,’ she said. ‘Do you want to see it? Chiffinch sent it over to see if we recognized it. Ring the bell by the fireplace, and I shall tell them to bring it up to us. You might as well return it to him.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  IT WAS ALMOST dark by the time the porter closed the front door behind me. I stood on the doorstep for a moment, giving my eyes time to adjust, for they were still dazzled by the glare of the candles in the withdrawing room.

  Under my arm I carried a bundle containing my own grey cloak parcelled up in an old sheet. My head was swimming, as if I had drunk too much wine too fast.

  My own grey cloak near the body.

  Sir Denzil’s death must surely be linked in some way to the other murders, though his thumbs had not been tied and he had been the last person in the world to nurse Fifth Monarchist sympathies. But he was Catherine Lovett’s betrothed and Edward Alderley’s friend. His murder could not be a coincidence.

  There was no pattern to it. But there must be a pattern.

  The heavy sky above the rooftops opposite was streaked with smoke from chimneys and fires among the ruins. A wind had sprung up while I was inside the house, so the streaks slanted eastwards.

  Something stirred on the other side of the lane. I made out the shape of the beggar woman hunched in her doorway. There was movement beside her, a scrap of paler grey. She was beckoning me.

  I walked slowly across the cobbles, crossed the kennel and stood over her. ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘You’ve already had a penny from me. I’ve no more for you today.’

  There was enough light to see that her eyes were open, looking up at me. She murmure
d something in a voice like a sighing hinge.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ I said irritably.

  ‘There’s men out looking for you.’

  I shivered. The wind had an edge to it. ‘Who?’

  ‘How’d I know, master? Three men. Asked if I’d seen you going into Quincy’s.’

  ‘How do you know it was me they were looking for?’

  ‘They said what you looked like, master. Thin as a shadow, pale as a cloud. Your clothes, too. And they knew when you’d come.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She pointed north, towards Moorgate. ‘They went that way.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Heard them say they’d go back by the wall.’

  That made sense, especially at this time of day. The road by the City wall was clear and relatively well-lit; there would be people about. It was the route I had planned to take home myself, instead of going the other way through the ruins.

  ‘What did they look like?’

  For an answer, she extended a hand, cupped palm upwards. When I had dropped a sixpence into it, she said, ‘One of them was a big man. Dark cloak. Black hat.’

  Worse than useless.

  I tried to whistle as I walked westwards down Cradle Alley with the bundle under my arm, concealed by my new winter cloak. I wanted it to appear as if I hadn’t a care in the world. God knew whom I was trying to fool. Myself, probably.

  The men had gone north towards the City wall. As soon as I was out of the woman’s sight, I would double back to the south and make my way east to Bishopsgate, untouched by the Fire. I should have little trouble finding a chair or a hackney coach there. The expense would be ruinous, but it meant I would be able to return to the Savoy in both safety and privacy.

  There was no help for it, however – this part of my journey was not pleasant. The area was a maze of blackened rubble. In the gathering dusk you could have hidden a regiment there.

  It was growing darker by the moment. My footsteps crunched through a thick slush of ash and mud. They sounded strangely loud to me. I took the noise of the streets for granted – the clatter, the shouts, the hooves, the cries – and I barely noticed it. Here, however, I noticed the silence, which seemed even more profound because of the distant sounds of bells and grating wheels from Bishopsgate and Moorgate.

  I was about to turn off Cradle Alley and plunge deeper into the labyrinth of destruction when a nearer sound brought me up short – something small and hard bouncing and scraping over the cobbles, like a stone skittering across the ground when someone kicked it. I peered into the gloom but nothing was visible except the ruined buildings and the darkening grey of the sky.

  I stood still and counted the seconds until a minute had passed. In that time, all my courage seeped away. I wanted lights, I wanted people. I turned about to face the way I had come.

  In front of me, not three yards away, was a tall, broad man in a dark cloak and hat. He was holding a staff in one hand. His other hand rested on the hilt of a dagger.

  There were footsteps behind me. I swung round to face this new threat. There were two other men. The nearer and smaller one was carrying a closed lantern. The larger man behind him wore a sword – the scabbard knocked against a fragment of brickwork as he came forward.

  ‘Shall I shine the light on him, your worship?’

  ‘No, it’s him.’ Edward Alderley materialized from the gloom. His single eye made his face seem lopsided, something belonging to a creature from a nightmare. ‘Good evening to you, Marwood.’

  Someone must have talked. I did not suspect Mistress Alderley. She had nothing to gain by betraying a rendezvous she herself had instigated. But the sour-faced maid or the footman at the New Exchange might have been eavesdropping when I had been in the coach with her mistress yesterday.

  The thoughts tumbled through my mind in an instant. I had dismissed Edward Alderley when I met him in Bow Lane as a blustering bully with more money than was good for him. But perhaps I was wrong about that. He – or his father – could easily have bribed his stepmother’s servants to spy on their mistress.

  I was uncomfortably aware of my vulnerability. If Alderley, father or son, wanted to talk privately to me, surely they could have found me easily enough at Whitehall? Instead Edward had cornered me here. There were no witnesses. He and his men were armed and I was not. It was three against one, and each of those three was taller and heavier than I was. And I was carrying the grey cloak that he must have seen yesterday on Primrose Hill.

  ‘It’s damnably cold,’ Alderley said. ‘Let’s walk up to Moorgate and find a tavern with a fire.’

  The tavern was by the City wall. He and I sat upstairs, where there was a long room for the better class of customer, at a table by a window with a view of the street. His men waited at the bottom of the stairs, blocking the only way out.

  I put the bundle on the table. I noticed his eyes on it.

  Gradually the knot of tension in my belly began to unravel. There were lights, noise and people around us. The smells of tobacco and spices and alcohol. This was a public place and they would find it hard to keep me here against my will.

  He drank deeply and refilled his glass before I had even touched mine. ‘Before she married my father,’ he said slowly, ‘my stepmother was married to Sir William Quincy. Perhaps you knew of him? Sir William rendered the King many services during his exile, and the King’s father before him. That’s why His Majesty has a kindness for his widow.’

  I nodded. It was not for me to suggest there might be other reasons for the King’s kindness. I drank a little wine.

  ‘She is a lady who has suffered much,’ he went on. ‘Sir William’s estate was much embarrassed. Travelling abroad with him unsettled her. And then there was the strain of nursing him through his last illness.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Indeed, she has never quite recovered, though to all outward appearances she seems to have done. She is nervous, Marwood, liable to flights of fancy, and strange, whimsical imaginings.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it, sir. But why—?’

  ‘I mention it to set you on your guard.’ The single eye, small and dark, looked steadily at my face. ‘She has had so much to distress her lately. First there was the murder of our servant, Layne, and that wicked business with the man who attacked me in my own bed. She misses the company of my cousin, who is away in the country. And now the murder of poor Sir Denzil has unsettled her to the point where we fear for her reason. The point is, you should not believe everything the poor lady says. When these fits are upon her, she grows fearful and sees plots and stratagems everywhere.’ He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘So what has she told you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t understand, sir.’

  ‘What reason did she give for wanting to see you?’ There was a rasp of impatience in Alderley’s voice. ‘And this is not the first time, I think.’ He poked the bundle. ‘And what’s that? Did she give you something?’

  ‘It’s an old cloak – I’m taking it to be mended. You may see if you wish.’

  I began to unravel the bundle, exposing a fold of the stained, grey wool. The light was fading and the candles were lit. I gambled on the fact that the colour would look much darker than it had by daylight on Primrose Hill.

  But he was already waving the bundle away. ‘What did my stepmother want?’

  ‘She asked if we had fresh information about your servant’s murder, sir. Layne’s, I mean. Master Williamson said I should wait on her. It was she who proposed meeting at Cradle Alley – perhaps she didn’t wish to alarm your father.’

  He poured more wine and sat back, considering what I had said. ‘And have you new intelligence?’

  ‘No, sir. There is nothing.’

  He drained the glass again. He took out his purse and removed a gold coin, which he dropped on the table between us. He pushed it across the board towards me. ‘If she summons you again, Marwood, send word to me. Will you do that? It’s for her
own good.’

  I looked at the gold piece. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Write to me at Barnabas Place.’ He rose to his feet. He stood there, swaying slightly, looking down at me. ‘You will not be the loser if you do me good service. But I don’t forgive those who take my money and fail me.’

  Edward Alderley turned away. I watched him walking heavily towards the stairs. I laid my hand on the sovereign and drew it towards me.

  In the Savoy, I found my father reading his Bible by candlelight. He did not look up when I came into the parlour. I draped the grey cloak over a chair and waited, knowing better than to interrupt him at such a time.

  In a moment, he looked up, smiling. ‘James,’ he said. ‘There is good news. “The king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole of the province of Babylon, and the chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon.” Is it not wonderful?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Have you had supper yet?’

  He shrugged the question aside. ‘Possibly. But can you recall the passage about the damned? When they are bound and led into the flames? I thought it was in the Book of Daniel too.’

  ‘I cannot bring it to mind, sir. Shall I call the maid, and ask her to bring a little broth?’

  My father appeared not to hear. ‘I can’t see it here,’ he said. ‘It’s so vexing. You must recall the passage, surely?’

  I had the Book of Daniel almost to heart because my father had read it to us so often when I was a boy. ‘I don’t remember it.’

  ‘You must.’ He frowned at me. ‘The condemned wear sackcloth and ashes, and their thumbs are bound behind their back, and they are driven like oxen down the broad way that leads to hell, and then—’

  ‘Their thumbs are bound?’

  ‘Eh? Yes, of course. And at the gates of hell, the Devil waits with—’

  ‘Their thumbs are bound behind their back?’

  My father looked at me and smiled. ‘I knew you would remember.’

  ‘No, sir. I don’t. But it’s not in the Book of Daniel. I’m sure of it.’

  He chewed his lower lip, which made him look like a distressed infant. His face brightened. ‘Ah! No – I have it! It’s in God’s Fiery Furnace: or The Smiting of Sinners. An uplifting polemic indeed, sweetly and cogently argued. I printed it as a pamphlet in the year the King lost his head. It was very popular among our brethren. The author was a most godly man whose name escapes me at present. It is a vision of the Last Judgement.’