The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  As Cat lay there, the floor became harder, her stomach emptier, and her body colder. The shutters rattled over the window. The shape of the frame was just visible – lines of dark grey that merged imperceptibly with the darkness. She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut, trying by force of will to compel sleep to come to her.

  When she next opened her eyes, something had changed. It took a moment to realize what it was. The darkness was not quite as absolute as it had been. The chamber had grown very slightly lighter.

  It was far too early for dawn. Cat sat up slowly. There was a puddle of light, faint and golden, spreading under the door leading to the ruined gallery over the cloister. As she watched, it became larger and brighter.

  Hairs rose on the back of her neck. She pushed aside the cassocks and surplices that covered her. Before she had time to stand, there was a faint grating noise from the other side of the door.

  The sound of a bar moving in its socket.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHIFFINCH TALKED IN a rapid, agitated voice, directing his words at Mistress Alderley in her chair by the fire. I was still standing by the window overlooking the Park, though he gave no sign that he was aware of my presence. But he must have wanted me to hear as well. That was worrying in itself.

  Henry Alderley, Master Chiffinch said, had last been seen in the morning, between ten and eleven o’clock, not far from St Giles in Cripplegate to the north of the City wall. He and his steward had gone out to collect rents from several tenements he owned in St Giles Without, attended by an armed manservant and travelling by coach. Normally he would not have gone himself, Mistress Alderley said, but since the Fire he had had much trouble with these leases: rents had not been paid, and he suspected several of his tenants of illegal subletting and making unlicensed alterations.

  ‘He is not a man who cares to be cheated,’ Mistress Alderley said primly.

  I thought it would be more accurate to say that if there were any cheating going on, Master Alderley preferred to do it himself.

  ‘But what’s happened, sir?’ she asked, growing agitated. ‘Was he called away? Where’s he gone?’

  Master Chiffinch cleared his throat. ‘He appears to have vanished, madam. He sent the servant and his steward – Mundy, is it? – back to the coach with the satchel containing the rents. He stayed in the yard at the back of the tenement – to visit the necessary house. And when he didn’t come back, Master Mundy went to enquire for him. It must have been at least thirty or forty minutes later. Why he didn’t go sooner, I simply cannot understand.’

  Mistress Alderley coughed. ‘My husband suffers from piles, sir, and he is often some little time when he is at his close stool at least home. And he grows very irritable if he is disturbed while he is …’

  Her voice trailed away to a discreet silence. I suppressed an unseemly bubble of mirth that rose like trapped wind from deep inside me.

  ‘It’s a shame Mundy left it so long, nevertheless.’ Chiffinch toyed with his wart, which I was beginning to suspect was a sign that he was feeling awkward. ‘When he got there, he found the privy occupied by an old woman. Who was deaf, to make matters worse. And there was no sign of Master Alderley.’ He threw me a glance, eyebrows raised. ‘No one admitted to seeing him in the yard.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Was there another way to leave the yard, sir?’

  ‘Yes. They’d left the coach in White Cross Street and walked from there. But the tenement’s yard is on the other side of the building, hard by Haberdashers’ Square. You know it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. So he could have walked out that way, easily enough. Or been taken.’ I heard Mistress Alderley sucking in her breath. ‘You could get a coach or cart in there. If you needed one.’

  Chiffinch grunted. ‘And it’s but a step from there to Grub Street.’

  For a moment I had the unsettling sensation that he had forgotten who I was, that he was treating me almost as an equal.

  ‘Was Master Alderley intending a journey, madam?’ he went on. ‘Or was there any sign he might be?’

  Mistress Alderley shook her head. ‘We were to meet at supper. He was going to the Exchange today, and dining with friends.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Is it Lovett who took him?’

  ‘I don’t see who else it can have been.’

  Her breathing was irregular, and her bosom rose and fell rapidly. ‘Why? To kill him in revenge for betraying him?’

  ‘I don’t know, madam,’ Chiffinch said. ‘We don’t even know your husband was taken. It’s possible he walked away of his own volition for some reason. But we must assume he is still alive. We haven’t found … anything to make us think otherwise.’

  They hadn’t found Alderley’s body. Not yet.

  ‘If it was Lovett, sir,’ I said, ‘you would think his daughter would know where Master Alderley is. Assuming she’s with her father now.’

  ‘My niece can have had nothing to do with this,’ Mistress Alderley said, firing up with anger and glaring at me.

  I bowed, as if acknowledging the truth of what she said. But I wasn’t so sure she was right. The young woman who had put on boy’s clothes during the Fire and bitten my hand was clearly capable of a good deal – including, perhaps, the murder of Sir Denzil Croughton. If that were true, she would take a little matter like abduction in her stride.

  ‘Master Alderley is not as other men,’ Chiffinch said carefully. ‘It would not be wise to let the fact of his disappearance become known. Or at least we must delay the news getting out for as long as possible. If his depositors and his creditors got wind of it too soon, or in the wrong way …’

  Mistress Alderley’s face lost its colour. ‘That would be … unwise.’ She turned to me. ‘You will be discreet, Master Marwood, I know.’

  ‘He will,’ Chiffinch said, looking grimly at me. ‘I’ll answer for it, madam.’

  ‘I must go home. I must talk to Edward, and we must stop the servants’ mouths. Pray, sir, have them send for my coach.’

  Chiffinch nodded to me, and I went out to speak to the servants and then to wait for the coach to be brought into the street. It must have been held in readiness – it came rumbling out of the gate to Scotland Yard in a matter of moments. Ann, Mistress Alderley’s maid, was inside.

  The Alderleys’ badge, the pelican plucking her breast to feed her young, was on the door. The Alderleys were rich enough to own at least two coaches. But whose wealth was it really?

  Ann, carrying her mistress’s cloak, came with me to the chamber where her mistress was waiting. I followed them downstairs again. Mistress Alderley did not look at me as Master Chiffinch handed her into the coach. But she beckoned me over when she was settled in her seat.

  ‘Remember what we were saying earlier, Marwood,’ she said, too low for anyone else to hear. ‘Find her for me. And you will earn my gratitude. It matters more to me than finding her father.’

  Grim-faced, Chiffinch watched the coach rattling down Whitehall towards Charing Cross. He glanced at me. ‘If any of this gets out, Master Marwood, I’ll see your father hanged at Tyburn. Do we understand each other?’

  I bowed and met his gaze squarely. ‘Perfectly, sir. What would you have me do?’

  ‘You can go to the devil for all I care. As long as you keep your mouth shut and hold yourself ready if I need you.’

  Chiffinch’s agitation made me wonder whether he himself, like the King, had had financial dealings with Master Alderley. It was certain that his disappearance had complicated this situation in ways I could only dimly perceive. I suspected that Chiffinch was reluctant to act without fresh instructions from his master.

  I had missed dinner, so there was nothing left for me to do but to go back to Scotland Yard, and continue with my work. I finished my assigned copying by mid-afternoon. Williamson signed the letters I had written and sent me off with them to the Letter Office.

  It was like any other tedious afternoon. The other clerks yawned over their work. Master Chiffinch had succeeded so far in this, at le
ast. The news of Master Alderley’s disappearance had not become widely known in Whitehall, which was remarkable in itself, for the palace was such a hive of gossip.

  All the while, my head was buzzing with speculation. Chiffinch had forbidden me to speak to anyone about Master Alderley, and I would be a fool to disobey him. Before that, however, Mistress Alderley had asked me to find her niece and, through her, Thomas Lovett.

  Nothing had changed that. Whatever had happened to Henry Alderley, the King would still want Lovett brought to him. Mistress Alderley still wanted her niece back – partly, I suspected, because she felt guilty about her treatment of the girl.

  There had been no trace of Catherine Lovett since Saturday afternoon in the coffee house. She could be anywhere in London, or even somewhere outside it. She might even be dead. But there was an obvious place to start looking, and no one had told me not to go there.

  Why not? In the back of my mind was the fugitive, shameful thought that perhaps, if I did, and if I had even some small success, Mistress Olivia Alderley might smile on me.

  It was after five o’clock by the time I knocked on the door of Mistress Noxon’s house in Three Cocks Yard.

  It was the little maidservant, Margery, who came to the door. I asked her if Master Hakesby was within.

  ‘Yes, sir, but I … I’m not supposed to let you in, not without calling the mistress.’

  ‘Show me up to Master Hakesby,’ I suggested. ‘And then tell your mistress.’

  She stared doubtfully at me. I took out my purse and gave her sixpence.

  ‘It’s important,’ I said. ‘As God’s my witness, no one will blame you.’

  She gave way at that, and led me upstairs to Master Hakesby’s apartment. He was standing by his draughtsman’s table, which was by the window. The daylight was fading rapidly and two candles burned on the table. He was fully dressed in a sober suit of grey, and he appeared less frail than he had done two days ago. He did not look surprised to see me. I wondered whether he had caught sight of me from the window as I crossed the yard below towards the house.

  ‘If it please you—’ Margery began.

  ‘Yes.’ Hakesby nodded to her. ‘You may go.’

  ‘Mistress Noxon, sir …’

  ‘You may tell her it’s quite all right, and she is not to trouble us. I’ll ring when I need you.’

  When the door had closed behind her, Hakesby sat in his elbow chair and waved me towards a stool nearby. ‘So you’ve come back. Well?’

  ‘Is my name familiar, sir?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Marwood, sir. Did you ever know of anyone else with this name? In the old days.’

  ‘I recall a printer called Marwood.’ He put his head to one side. ‘In the old days. I believe I had some small acquaintance with him.’

  ‘My father, sir,’ I said. ‘I’m still looking for Jane.’

  He gave the slightest of shrugs but said nothing.

  ‘Except she isn’t really Jane, is she?’

  ‘Really? What makes you think that?’

  ‘Her name is Catherine Lovett.’ I saw a flicker of movement cross his face, like a wince of pain. ‘She lived at Barnabas Place with her uncle, Henry Alderley, and his family until the Fire. She fled here a day or so after St Paul’s burned down, perhaps because her uncle would have her marry a man she did not want. An old servant of the Lovetts, one Jem Brockhurst, was thought to have had a hand in her departure and to have attacked her cousin, Edward, on the same night.’

  ‘Alderley?’ He raised his head. ‘The goldsmith?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He had Jem flogged to encourage him to confess his crimes, but the old man died under the lash. As for Mistress Lovett, Mistress Noxon sheltered her, and gave her another name. She must have known who Jane really is, and I think you did, too.’

  ‘This is nonsense,’ Hakesby said. ‘Be careful what you say. It’s slander. It’s better that you go now. Or you’ll make matters worse for yourself when I bring you to court.’

  ‘In a moment. Hear me out.’ It was an empty threat, and he knew it. ‘Later, Mistress Noxon claimed Jem’s box, claiming to be his niece. She probably is, which will be easy enough to prove. She sent a servant to Barnabas Place to collect the box, though she gave Master Alderley the impression that she lived in Oxford, not London. The servant brought it here.’

  I paused. Hakesby continued to look at me. His face was stern and yet unconcerned, as if he were a judge listening to my evidence as I stood before him in the dock. His left hand lay on his lap. It trembled slightly. A trace of the ague? Fear?

  ‘You were kind to her,’ I went on. ‘When there was trouble with the other servants, and Mistress Noxon said she had to go, you offered to take her in at your new place of business. She went to stay at a coffee house for a few days first. But on Saturday a man came and took her away. He said he was you. But he wasn’t.’

  The long fingers of Hakesby’s right hand tightened on the arm of the chair. I saw the knuckles grow pale.

  ‘I think that man was her father,’ I said. ‘Thomas Lovett. The Regicide. Did you know him well, sir? In the old days.’

  Hakesby would not answer.

  ‘Sir,’ I said, growing desperate, ‘my own father suffered for the same beliefs as Thomas Lovett’s, and he made his family suffer for them too. Nevertheless I have sympathy for such men. Many of them were upright and honourable in what they did.’

  ‘And you? Where do you stand?’

  ‘I think we must let bygones be bygones. The old days have passed. Times have changed, and we must change with them.’

  ‘Some people never change,’ he said wearily. ‘They are hard as rock.’

  ‘And Mistress Lovett? Is she as hard as rock as well?’

  Then, at long last, Hakesby abandoned the pretence. ‘She’s not like her father, and I doubt that she shares his beliefs. Though she has some of his gifts. But what is she to you? Why should you care what happens to her? Why should it matter to you if she lives or dies?’

  ‘Her Aunt Alderley asked me to find her and bring her home. She cares for the girl and will not let her come to harm. And she has powerful friends of her own, quite apart from her husband.’

  ‘Are you a government spy?’

  ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘I work as a clerk in Master Williamson’s office. I help him conduct the Gazette.’

  ‘So you dance to the government’s tune, Master Marwood?’

  ‘No, sir. I work to live. My father is failing. I must put food on the table for us, and find a roof for our heads.’

  Hakesby stirred in his chair. ‘Doesn’t a daughter belong with her father?’

  ‘Not this daughter. And not this father.’ I leaned forward. ‘Sir, I don’t know what Master Lovett was, but I know what he has become. In the last few weeks he has murdered at least three men, including one of Master Alderley’s manservants, who was spying on him, and one of his own former comrades, a man named Sneyd.’

  ‘Sneyd? The tailor. I knew him – he made a coat for me once, in Oliver’s time.’

  ‘They found him last month in the Fleet Ditch.’

  ‘Drowned?’

  ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘He was stabbed in the brain by someone who knew what he was doing. The manservant was killed in exactly the same way. And, in both cases, the thumbs of the dead man had been tied together.’

  Hakesby’s face changed. Fear had touched him. ‘You said he’s killed three men. Who was the third?’

  ‘Sir Denzil Croughton, last Saturday. He was betrothed to Mistress Lovett.’

  ‘The man who was stabbed on Primrose Hill? You’re raving.’

  ‘Does it sound as if I’m the one who’s raving?’ I stood up and looked down at him. ‘Three men murdered, and who knows how many others have died because of this? Lovett was also behind the Whitehall fire last week. God knows what else he intends.’

  Hakesby lifted his arms, clasped his long bony fingers together and laid his hands on his lap. ‘I fear for her.’
r />   I bent towards him and said in a low voice, ‘I wish Mistress Lovett nothing but good. But don’t you see? If she’s with him now, he will drag her down with him. So if you know where she is, can we not help her?’

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CAT PUSHED ASIDE the coverings and slowly stood up. Her fingers wrapped around the handle of the knife. She drew it from its sheath.

  The light on the floor increased in size. The door was silently opening. Glowing lines appeared at the top, the bottom and one side of the door, narrow at first but gradually widening into slabs of colour. The light was not bright. She guessed it came from another closed lantern.

  She backed into the corner. Her mouth was dry. It was too late to hide. Only the wall cupboard was large enough to conceal her, but that was directly opposite the opening door and she hadn’t time to reach it, let alone to reach it without making a noise.

  She took a step along the wall to the right. Then another. The movement brought the opening door at least partly between her and whoever was on the other side of it.

  She heard a shuffling, faint as a whisper. Attack was the only course left to her. Go for his eyes, she thought, remembering Cousin Edward, or his manhood. Or both.

  Her foot touched the jug, which still contained a little beer. It slid, scraping, across the stone floor.

  ‘Catherine. Is that you?’

  The whisper reached her through the not-quite darkness. Fear dropped away from her, replaced in that first moment by a stab of anger, sharp as her own knife.

  How dare he?

  ‘Sir?’ she said.

  The door swung open to its full extent. The dark shape of her father almost filled the doorway. She put the knife in its sheath and returned it to her pocket.

  The anger diminished, and became a dull ache of despair, a sense that all roads led back to her father, that she would never escape him or the life he had chosen for them.