The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  First, my own torn grey summer cloak, which the boy–girl had stolen from me by Ludgate more than two months ago on the night that St Paul’s burned.

  Second, and six weeks later, that same cloak, hanging on a nail in Convocation House Yard. When I had tried to take it, a respectable-looking draughtsman prevented me, saying that it belonged to someone else. Whether he had meant himself or some other person, however, it had still been my cloak, with the slash in the lining made by a cutpurse’s knife the summer before last.

  Third, on Saturday, my cloak again – caught in a hedge on Primrose Hill, a few yards from a man stabbed and left to bleed to death. Not a nameless man, either, but the betrothed husband of Catherine Lovett, Sir Denzil Croughton, whom I had first glimpsed through a window at Barnabas Place.

  In the middle of the morning, a servant brought me a note, a few pencilled words from Master Chiffinch. He commanded me to call on him at six o’clock in the evening.

  At midday I walked back to the Savoy and dined with the Newcombs and my father.

  Margaret was in the kitchen that day, and I noticed she was hanging out sheets on the line in the back yard. After dinner, when I was leaving with the grey cloak wrapped in a bundle, the gate to the yard opened, and she beckoned me towards her.

  ‘There’s been men asking about him, sir,’ she whispered loudly, her face even redder than usual.

  ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘Master Coldridge. Two men were in the Blood-Bowl Tavern yesterday evening.’

  ‘They came into Alsatia?’

  She nodded. ‘They weren’t bailiffs or anything like that. Free-spending. Big men. Carrying swords.’

  ‘They asked for Coldridge by name?’

  ‘Yes. Sam said they were talking to Rock and Captain Boyd about him.’

  I felt suddenly nauseous, with Mistress Newcomb’s dinner heavy on my stomach. ‘Did they talk to Sam as well?’

  ‘No. But I thought you should know.’

  I thanked her and gave her something for her trouble. So here was something else to think about, a formless threat. The trouble was, looking for traces of Coldridge in Alsatia might lead the men to my father.

  I took up the bundle, walked up to the Strand and turned east towards the City. Williamson could do without me for a few hours.

  As winter approached, the battered hulk of St Paul’s looked even more forlorn than it had at the end of the summer. Rain had smeared soot and ash on every surface. Under a heavy grey sky, seagulls circled the central tower and patrolled the emptiness where there had once been roofs.

  Even in ruin, the cathedral attracted people. Perhaps they marvelled at it in decay more than they had done before the Fire. I joined the group of men filing through the gate into Convocation House Yard.

  The men immediately in front of me were going to inspect what was left of Bishop Braybrooke and the other bodies that had survived the Fire, though time and the weather was steadily decreasing any resemblance they had to human beings. But they were still proving an astonishingly popular spectacle. My neighbour told me excitedly that the Duke of York himself had come to inspect the dead bishop this very morning. Royal patronage increased the bishop’s value still further.

  Two men on the gate, the cathedral watchmen, were taking money in the guise of charity for admitting sightseers to this carnival of the dead. The watchmen’s dog was chained up outside the hut where they spent much of their time. I touched one of them on the sleeve and showed him the general pass that Williamson had given me, the one I had used to gain entry on my previous visit. It vouched for me as a clerk attached to Lord Arlington’s office and included an imposing seal.

  ‘You remember me,’ I said. ‘I was here last month on the King’s business to see the Chapter Clerk’ – I groped in my memory for the man’s name – ‘Master Frewin.’

  He nodded slowly, his eyes on the seal, swaying slightly on his feet. He was probably illiterate as well as tipsy. He jerked his thumb at the inner enclosure within Convocation House Yard, in the corner by the cloister, the place where I had seen the cloak. ‘You’re out of luck, sir. Master Frewin’s not here today. But if you’d like to see Bishop Braybrooke instead, I—’

  ‘I don’t want Master Frewin this time.’

  ‘Just as well, sir.’ He chuckled at my expense. ‘Seeing that he’s in Derbyshire at his mother’s deathbed.’

  I took out my purse. ‘I met a draughtsman when I was last here. I need his name. He’s a tall grey man, thin, middle-aged.’

  The man stopped laughing. He blinked with the intellectual effort of this sudden change of subject. ‘You mean Master Hakesby, sir? Who works with Dr Wren? Not in today either.’

  ‘That’s the man,’ I said, hoping it was. ‘Where can I find him?’

  The watchman paused until I had dropped a shilling into his palm. ‘Off the Strand, sir. Three Cocks Yard. Obliged to you, sir.’

  I stared at him and blinked. ‘Where?’

  ‘Three Cocks Yard. It’s where he lodges. It’s off the—’

  ‘I know where it is. Which house?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and turned away, with the bundle under my arm.

  I had not expected this connection between my missing cloak and a quite different part of this opaque and unsettling affair. As I trudged down Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street, I played out the links of the chain in my mind. Hakesby, the man who stopped me taking the cloak, lived in Three Cocks Yard. I had been there before, when I had followed the servant trundling Jem’s box through the streets from Barnabas Place. I had lost sight of the man in the Strand, but possibly he had gone up the alley leading to Three Cocks Yard. I remembered the new houses, brick-built and quietly prosperous, some with shops on their ground floors, arranged around the paved court with a pump.

  When I reached the yard, I went into the apothecary’s shop and asked the man within if he knew Master Hakesby.

  He gave me a swift, assessing glance. ‘Two doors up, sir. He lodges at Mistress Noxon’s.’

  At the house, the outer door stood open, leading to an inner door beyond. I knocked. A scrawny maid answered my knock. She frowned when she saw me, as if trying to remember something.

  I gave her my name and asked for Master Hakesby, on cathedral business. She led me upstairs. On the way she glanced back.

  ‘Your pardon, sir. Have you been here before?’

  ‘Never.’

  I heard movement below. I peered over the banister rail. There was a man in the gloom at the back of the hall, coming from another room with a chair in his arms. He looked up at me, and for an instant our eyes met. I saw a flash of recognition in his face, and knew it must be mirrored in mine. He was the red-headed manservant who had wheeled the barrow from Barnabas Place. So he had known that I was following him.

  On the first-floor landing, the maid tapped on the door. ‘Master Marwood for you, sir.’

  ‘Who?’ a man said in a low, rumbling voice. ‘Come in, if you must.’

  The apartment was at the front of the house, with a window overlooking the court below. A fire banked high with coal burned in the grate. The chamber was furnished for work rather than leisure or sleep. A draughtsman’s board had been set up by the window with a tall stool beside it. Wooden models of buildings were displayed on shelves, together with rolls of plans and instruments whose purpose I could not guess.

  In the middle of this sat Master Hakesby in his dressing gown, with a blanket spread over his knees and a cap of rabbit fur on his head. His gaunt face was unshaven and thinner than I remembered. Beside his armchair was a table covered with books and a pile of papers, weighted down with a handbell.

  I bowed to him. ‘Your servant, sir.’

  He frowned up at me. ‘Have we met, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A few weeks ago – in the shed at Convocation House Yard. My Lord Arlington sent me to inspect the work of clearance, and I was waiting to say goodbye to Master Frewin.’

  He nodded. ‘Ye
s, yes.’ His eyes widened. ‘You may go, Margery.’

  The maid curtsied, shot me another curious glance and left us alone.

  ‘Forgive me that I don’t rise,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a touch of ague, and it’s left me as weak as a kitten. I recall perfectly how we met.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘And I cannot understand why you want another meeting.’

  For answer, I set down my bundle among his papers on the table and undid it. I took out the grey cloak and held it up. ‘Do you remember this, sir?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he snapped. ‘That’s Jane’s cloak. So you found a way to take it after all.’

  ‘Who’s Jane?’

  He waved a hand, waving the question away. ‘Leave the cloak with me, sir. I’ll see it restored to its rightful owner. Where did you find it?’

  ‘I know it’s someone else’s cloak,’ I said.

  ‘That’s nonsense. Anyone here will tell you that. Ask the servants. Ask Mistress Noxon.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  I took up the cloak and bowed.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘I haven’t finished with you. And put down that cloak. Who are you? I cannot believe my Lord Arlington would employ—’

  I closed the door on him. I heard him calling me as I went down the stairs.

  The manservant was lingering at the back of the hall, pretending to examine the chair he had been carrying. He lumbered towards me.

  ‘I’ve seen you before, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, moving down the hall towards the front door. ‘I followed you here when you brought a box from Barnabas Place in Holborn.’

  My honesty took him by surprise. His mouth opened but no words emerged.

  The grey cloak was draped over my arm. I held it up. ‘This is Jane’s, isn’t it?’

  A bell jangled above our heads. Master Hakesby was summoning help.

  The servant blinked. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is she here? I’d like to return it to her as soon as I can.’

  ‘No, sir. She’s gone.’ He stretched out a hand and touched the cloak, as if to reassure himself it was real. The gesture was almost a caress. ‘Mistress Noxon said she had to go away.’

  The bell rang on.

  The scrawny maidservant appeared at the back of the hall, passing us on her way to the stairs. She shot me a glance.

  ‘Where can I find Jane?’ I said.

  The maidservant swung round. ‘Jane? She’s at that coffee house by Charing Cross.’ There was a shrill note of triumph in her voice. ‘She’s not coming back here, sir, I tell you that.’

  A woman’s voice called down from somewhere higher in the house. ‘Margery! Why haven’t you answered that bell? Quickly, girl!’

  The maid ran up the stairs. I hurried to the door before it was too late. The manservant followed me and unbolted it. He let me out.

  As I ran past him and down the steps, he said, ‘Pray, sir, tell her John asked to be remembered to her. Tell her I’m waiting for her. All I need’s a sign, sir, and I’ll walk to the end of the earth for her. A sign.’

  The coffee house was doing a thriving trade. I did not usually frequent such places, because of the expense, but they were springing up everywhere. In general, the view at Whitehall was that coffee houses should be discouraged, because they attracted men of a puritanical cast of mind. They acted as centres of information and encouraged potentially seditious debate. Taverns and alehouses were quite a different matter: men went there for good fellowship and to get drunk.

  I went inside, found the landlord, and asked for Jane.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The maidservant, sir, from Mistress Noxon’s in Three Cocks Yard.’

  ‘Oh – her. She’s not here now. Why?’

  ‘I have her cloak, sir. I wanted to return it. Where can I find her?’

  He called his wife to answer that. She came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a big woman and in her presence her husband seemed to shrink.

  ‘She’s gone, sir,’ she said. ‘She was only here for a day or two, as a kindness to Mistress Noxon. She left on Saturday.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Master Hakesby came for her in the evening.’

  I stared at her. Then why hadn’t Hakesby mentioned this just now? ‘Are you sure it was him?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ she snapped. ‘When he enquired for Jane, I asked him if he was Master Hakesby, and he said he was. Mistress Noxon said he’d call for her, though we weren’t expecting him so soon.’ She glanced at her husband. ‘Jane was out when he came, remember, and when she got back she looked like she’d been rolling in the mud. I told her to make herself decent before she went to him.’

  The man nodded at me. ‘The gentleman’s got her cloak. That’s why he’s looking for her.’

  ‘She wasn’t wearing it when she came back. Did she lose it somewhere?’ The landlady frowned. ‘Anyway, how did you know to find her here?’

  ‘They told me at Three Cocks Yard,’ I said. ‘Is that the Master Hakesby I know? The draughtsman? Grey-faced. Very thin, and not in the best of health?’

  ‘He looked healthy enough to me,’ the landlady said. ‘Tall man, bit of grey in his hair, but vigorous enough.’

  ‘Is he always like that?’ I asked. ‘Perhaps I saw him when he was ill.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’ She was growing tired of my questions. ‘Never saw him before.’

  ‘Big man like that, prime of life,’ her husband said, clinging to his grievance. ‘You’d think he’d have an appetite to match. All he had was a little pot of coffee. Close-fisted.’

  ‘He paid for it at least, I hope?’ his wife said.

  ‘Yes, but nothing over. He took up a whole booth for well over an hour, you know. Waste of space. It was Saturday, too, and the place was crowded.’

  Saturday, I thought: the day of Sir Denzil Croughton’s murder. ‘Have you any idea where they went?’

  The landlady put her hands on her hips and glared at me. ‘Why are you asking all this? If you’ve come from Three Cocks Yard, you’ll know Master Hakesby. He lives there, doesn’t he? So you can go back and ask him yourself.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  TOWARDS EVENING, I took a boat to Whitehall. The sky was overcast. There were neither stars nor moon. The river was something to be heard, felt and smelled rather than seen.

  There were other boats on the water, their lanterns bobbing up and down, creating globes of light containing shadowy figures. It was raining hard and growing steadily colder. Passengers and boatmen had their hats pulled low and their cloaks pulled high.

  At the palace, I walked across from the public stairs to the door of the King’s apartments. One of the guards had been on duty on my earlier visit. He recognized me. I asked him to send word that I was here by appointment to see Master Chiffinch.

  He took up a sheet of paper. ‘You’re on the list. You can wait in the anteroom if you want.’

  I paced up and down among the other people who were waiting – a restless crowd, all of us wanting something, none of us capable of settling to anything in case our name was called. Chiffinch kept me kicking my heels for nearly an hour.

  At last a servant conducted me up to a small office with a view of the river. There was a guard at the door. Chiffinch was behind his desk, reading a letter, his fingers playing unconsciously with the wart on his chin.

  I bowed low. ‘Your servant, sir. I have something—’

  ‘Be silent.’ He looked up. ‘I want to show you something.’

  He stood up and led the way from the room. He locked the door and set off down the passage with me behind him. I heard the soldier’s footsteps behind me. At a brisk pace he took me across the Great Court, through the range with the guardhouse and across to the familiar lodgings in Scotland Yard where Master Williamson had his private office. We did not go upstairs, however, but to the door of a room on the ground floor. It opened off the anteroom where there were always two soldiers on duty. The door had a sma
ll opening at eye level, with a shutter across it.

  Master Chiffinch stood back. ‘Open it,’ he said.

  I slid the shutter across. I had a view of a room no more than nine feet square, dimly lit by a rushlight on the sill of a window placed high in the wall. A man was lying on the floor. His hands were bound in front of him. His legs were bound, too, but above the knee. I knew who it was even before the man looked up at me.

  Chiffinch reached over my shoulder and closed the shutter. ‘Samuel Witherdine,’ he said in a low voice, too low for the soldiers to be able to make out the words. ‘Discharged sailor. Cripple. Bankrupt. The other day, he was asking questions in Alsatia about a certain Master Coldridge. His wife serves Newcomb the printer, with whom you have many dealings and in whose house you lodge. What a curious coincidence, Marwood.’

  ‘Sir,’ I said, feeling the sweat break out under my shirt, ‘this is not what it seems.’

  ‘The question is, how would it seem to the King? His trust has been betrayed. The son of a traitor is a traitor in his turn. Like father, like son.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ I turned to face him. ‘As God’s my witness, sir, I’ve not betrayed the King.’

  ‘Then what have you done?’

  ‘My father is not himself. His wits go astray, and his legs follow them. He wandered into Alsatia last week, where he fell and hurt himself. The Witherdines rescued him and brought word to me.’

  ‘So? This is not to the point, Marwood.’

  I would have given everything I owned to know what Sam had already told Chiffinch. I couldn’t risk being caught in a lie. ‘My father had a story that he’d met Thomas Lovett in Alsatia, and that it was Lovett who had made him fall.’

  ‘You didn’t think to tell me this?’ Chiffinch said.

  ‘Because what my father says is not to be trusted, sir. But I asked Mistress Witherdine to enquire after Lovett in Alsatia. It turned out that her husband had seen a man answering his description in the Blood-Bowl Tavern. He lodged nearby for a few days, using the name of Coldridge. He left the same day my father wandered into Alsatia.’

  ‘Alsatia is but a stone’s throw from Bridewell,’ Chiffinch observed.