Fire Catcher

by C. S. Quinn

  He assessed their new location. Better to go back up Shoe Lane, he decided.

  ‘Where’s the marriage register?’ asked Lily.

  Charlie pointed back to the blazing cellar.

  ‘It might have led us to the chest,’ said Lily disappointedly. ‘The book had names of a dozen other people who knew Torr. Now we have nothing.’

  Charlie studied his leather coat.

  ‘The blue flame wasn’t like normal fire,’ he said, looking at the row of small buttons along the front. ‘No scorch on the leather. No tarnish to the buttons. We should go to Nile Street,’ he decided. ‘An alchemist might tell us much.’

  They turned out on to Shoe Lane to discover a clutch of Londoners had gathered. The flames of the Cheshire Cheese had quickly caught the row of tall houses and now three roared with fire. Charlie realised too late how they must look, emerging from a cellar covered in smoke and cinder smuts.

  A brown-toothed merchant was already pointing a finger at Lily.

  ‘Foreigners!’ he shouted, eyeing her toffee-coloured skin. ‘Here are the villains who fired Fleet Street.’

  People began to join the shout and Charlie’s stomach rolled icy with dread. Behind them on Fleet Street, heads had turned and people were drifting towards them.

  It didn’t take much to start a mob attack in London.

  ‘She burned the cellar!’ the man continued, turning to the people around him. ‘She comes from the Pope to destroy London!’

  Lily opened her mouth to protest but Charlie pressed her arm.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ he hissed. ‘Protest and you’ll make it worse faster.’

  ‘Then what should I do?’ whispered Lily helplessly, looking at the assembling crowd.

  Charlie’s face twisted in terror and his finger shot high to the heavens.

  ‘By God!’ he shouted. ‘A fiery comet! It’s God’s judgement on us all!’

  The crowd’s gaze swung upwards as one and Charlie grabbed Lily’s arm.

  ‘Run,’ he said.

  Chapter 34

  Jacob was shaking his head in denial. He fingered the crown and knot wound on his forearm. The boys were making fireballs in Master Blackstone’s house. And his fellow initiate Enoch, blind in one eye from an accident as apothecaries’ apprentice, was telling him tall tales.

  ‘Rats only,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing in Master Blackstone’s cellar.’

  ‘I tell you I hear things,’ whispered Enoch. ‘There is something down there. I hear him talking to it. Late at night when everyone sleeps.’

  Enoch swivelled his one good eye to the cellar trapdoor. Since his first visit, he never wanted to go through it ever again. But he knew what he’d heard.

  ‘Fine houses like Master Blackstone’s,’ suggested Jacob uneasily, gesturing to their comfortable dwelling, ‘make noises.’

  Enoch didn’t answer. He rolled the fireball from the fat and stashed it in a neat pile with its fellows.

  ‘You’re imagining things,’ said Jacob, sounding firmer than he felt. ‘Master Blackstone never goes into the cellar, ’cept for initiations.’

  ‘He does,’ insisted Enoch. He looked up at Jacob and his vacant red-white blind eye shifted too. ‘I’ve heard him. He takes food down for it too.’

  ‘There’s nothing in the cellar,’ muttered Jacob. ‘Keep working.’

  ‘You think you’ll be initiated to the higher level,’ said Enoch, catching on. ‘If you work hard and obey. Don’t ask no questions.’

  ‘Good sons obey the father,’ said Jacob, parroting their brotherhood vows. ‘They do not question.’

  Enoch had the ghost of a smile on his starved features.

  ‘You really want to take the second initiation?’ He was looking at Jacob’s still-livid forearm burn. ‘Think you’ll survive it? Go a level higher? Become a Steward?’

  ‘I want to learn truth,’ said Jacob.

  ‘But you don’t know what you’ll have to endure,’ said Enoch, rolling another fireball.

  ‘Do you?’ Jacob was curious, despite his vow not to question the rites of passage.

  Enoch scanned Jacob’s face with his good eye. ‘Starvation,’ he said darkly. ‘Locked in the cellar ’til your belly bloats and you see things.’

  Jacob blanched. There was no worse pain than hunger.

  ‘And you’re not told nothing good at the end of it,’ continued Enoch, knowledgably. ‘I heard one of the higher initiates talking.’ He gestured towards the handful of better-dressed recruits known as Stewards. They’d been tasked with arranging lead cauldrons over various points of the city and were examining a rudimentary map.

  ‘Papers,’ concluded Enoch. ‘That’s all they get told. There’s papers with legendary powers, lost, somewhere in the city.’ He squinted his bad eye. ‘Not worth knowing,’ he said. ‘And,’ he waved a finger, ‘I don’t think Master Blackstone wants any of us low boys as his higher folk. Have you noticed? All the higher initiates are finer than us.’ Enoch tapped his head. ‘I think,’ he concluded, ‘all the Steward places are filled.’

  ‘Master Blackstone is an honourable man,’ said Jacob uncomfortably. ‘He looks after us. Protects us. He found the gaoler who hurt my brother,’ he added, loyalty brimming up. ‘Paid him vengeance.’

  ‘He’s good at that, vengeance,’ agreed Enoch. ‘But he doesn’t like questions.’

  ‘Good sons . . .’ began Jacob.

  Enoch waved him down. ‘Good sons, good sons,’ he said. ‘But a good father. Does he make his sons traitors, without their say so?’

  ‘He wants to bring down the King who betrayed us.’

  ‘Never asked us though, did he?’ said Enoch, drawing a hand over his stomach. ‘Your guts ripped out and shown to you,’ he added, making a ghoulish mime. ‘If they find you.’

  Enoch looked at Jacob.

  ‘When he recruited me,’ said Enoch, ‘from the St Giles slums, Blackstone told me we’d be working to follow our Catholic faith freely. I thought him a dark angel. He never mentioned no firing of the city.’

  ‘It’s the bigger plan,’ said Jacob uncertainly. Though he had to admit his experience had been the same.

  ‘You’re from St Giles too?’ added Jacob with interest.

  ‘Most of us are,’ said Enoch. ‘The Sealed Knot looks right nice to boys like us don’t it? Pledges and mottos. Best mottos you make in St Giles is “every man for himself”.’

  Jacob smiled. ‘Or, don’t sacrifice yourself for others,’ he grinned, thinking of the cut-throat slums. ‘Stop talking,’ he added, flicking a nervous glance at the Stewards.

  But Enoch was insistent. ‘Don’t you ever question why we’re never allowed in the cellar? It’d be a right enough place to store fireballs wouldn’t it? In case anyone ever came looking.’ He scratched the back of his neck, where lice nested deep in his snarled hair.

  ‘’S a cellar, nothing more,’ grunted the other boy. But there was something in his voice now which suggested doubt. ‘We’ve all been down there anyways,’ he added uncertainly.

  ‘For initiation,’ said Enoch, his bad eye twitching. ‘In the dark. With barely candle flame to see by. And a lot of screaming.’

  They were both silent at this. What Master Blackstone did to boys who failed the initiation was something none forgot.

  ‘He keeps us afraid,’ said Enoch. ‘That’s his thing isn’t it? Fear. He thinks it keeps us predictable. But what if there’s something truly bad down there. Some demon?’ He crossed himself. ‘Some sulphur-reeking monster,’ he concluded, ‘ready to drag us all down to hell?’

  ‘There’s nothing down there,’ said the other boy. But he didn’t meet Enoch’s good eye. He was making fireballs at double the speed.

  ‘Have you ever thought about it?’ asked Enoch quietly.

  ‘Can’t say as I have,’ replied Jacob, affecting nonchalance. ‘I’m a heavy sleeper.’

  ‘Not the cellar,’ said Enoch. ‘Leaving. Have you ever thought about leaving?’

  Jacob
looked automatically to the Stewards.

  ‘Shut up, Enoch,’ he said, giving him a shove. ‘I mean it. I don’t want to end up down in that cellar. You neither,’ he added.

  ‘You have thought about it,’ said Enoch. ‘Of course you have.’ He turned back to making the fireballs. ‘We all have,’ he concluded. And his gaze drifted back to the locked cellar door.

  Chapter 35

  Charlie and Lily raced over Lud Gate Hill in the direction of the Great Fire. Behind them an angry mob surged.

  ‘You’ve made them angrier by tricking them,’ panted Lily as they sprinted towards the burning shell of Cheapside. ‘They’ll tear us limb from limb when they catch us.’

  ‘They’ll have to catch us first,’ said Charlie, weaving north on to Fleet Lane. ‘This way.’

  The crowd was swelling behind them, attracting angry Londoners drawn by their shouts.

  ‘We’re heading towards the Fleet Prison,’ protested Lily. ‘They’ll corner me and throw me straight in gaol.’

  ‘Not if we get there first,’ said Charlie as the Fleet loomed into view. ‘We can hide in the gatehouse. It’s the last place they’ll look.’

  He slowed his pace as they approached the entrance and took her hand. Lily glanced helplessly over her shoulder. The thick of the charging crowd had not yet appeared.

  ‘Walk normally,’ Charlie said as they approached the portcullis of the gatehouse. ‘We don’t want to seem to have arrived in haste.’

  They slipped past the open portcullis as the first pitch of the crowd lurched past the Old Bailey. A gaoler stood up, squinting at the shouts of the mob in the distance.

  ‘No visitors,’ he said, pointing back towards Cheapside. ‘The fire will be here by nightfall. We’ve already freed fifty people. Be on your way.’

  Charlie glanced back down Fleet Lane. He could see the brown-toothed merchant at the head of the charge. Lily didn’t stand a chance if they stepped out of the gatehouse now.

  ‘You remember me?’ Lily said to the gaoler.

  Charlie swung round in shock.

  ‘Lily Boswell,’ she added. ‘I sat for my portrait with you before I was imprisoned here.’

  The gaoler scrutinised her and then sucked his mottled teeth.

  ‘Hundreds of felons I commit to memory,’ he said, eyeing her. ‘But I remember you right enough. We played at cards.’

  ‘I beat you at cards,’ she corrected him.

  His eyes narrowed.

  ‘What do you come for?’ he said testily. ‘You were set free. I owe you nothing.’

  ‘Only news of the fire,’ said Lily. ‘And I won’t tell your wife of the prisoner with the dark hair,’ she added meaningfully as the gaoler opened his mouth to suggest payment.

  ‘We had word from the watch that the fire goes north,’ said the gaoler. ‘No one does a thing about it. Only looks to their own goods and caterwauls. We got a few extra felons I suppose,’ he conceded begrudgingly. ‘Looks like we may have another,’ he added, pointing to the approaching crowd.

  A few other gaolers were gathering at the gatehouse now, drawn to the noise. They always enjoyed theatre of this kind. And often they got a prisoner to keep.

  The crowd was barrelling towards the prison, attracting angry Londoners as it went.

  ‘Anyone caught?’ asked the gaoler, looking at his ragged companions.

  A gaoler with a peg leg was peering out into the crowd.

  ‘Hard to see,’ he said squinting. ‘Certainly they are blood-thirsty enough.’

  ‘To what purpose?’ said Lily’s gaoler disgustedly. ‘When the King orders the release of felons.’ He wrinkled his nose without waiting for a reply.

  ‘Ninety felons’ faces,’ he complained tapping the side of his head. ‘Ninety. Then there’s visitors besides. It’s not easy work making sure the wrong people don’t wander out. Them in the Clink have it easy,’ he added. ‘Closed cells. A bunch of keys.’

  ‘How far north is the fire?’ interrupted Charlie, mapping Nile Street where the alchemists practised.

  ‘Right up to the London Wall,’ said the gaoler. ‘And now they think it might go further west. Talk of it crossing the Fleet. And if the London Stone should burn . . .’

  Charlie and Lily exchanged glances.

  ‘Nile Street is gone then?’ said Lily. ‘The alchemists have fled?’

  ‘Nile Street, Whitehorse Yard,’ said the gaoler listing them off. ‘Alchemists are long gone and good riddance. God’s mysteries are not for men to unravel,’ he added.

  The mob had arrived outside the prison now and the guards milled hopefully by the door. Charlie saw Lily was holding her breath. Then the people streamed past without stopping.

  ‘Looks like whoever they had in mind has escaped,’ said the gaoler disappointedly. ‘Already they break away.’

  Lily let out a perceptible sigh of relief.

  The gaoler spat in the dust.

  ‘I suppose it’s for the best,’ he decided. ‘If we’re not allowed to keep men here. Bridewell Prison guards will be making a pretty penny,’ he added wistfully. ‘The crowd has already turned over three Catholics and a Frenchman who were throwing fireballs,’ he explained. ‘And we get an extra penny for gaoling a treason.’

  ‘Can we go out through the prison?’ asked Charlie. ‘The crowd is thick on Lud Gate. It would do us a service to use the Snow Hill entrance.’

  The gaoler straightened, scratching his groin.

  ‘I suppose there’s no harm in it,’ he said. ‘This prison will be empty by tomorrow, if the King gets his way.’

  He laughed mirthlessly.

  ‘That’s what we get for bringing the monarch back,’ he said. ‘We were better under Cromwell.’

  Chapter 36

  ‘Tell me again, James,’ said Arabella, closing her brown eyes tight. Her long limbs were ranged languidly across the sheets.

  ‘I love you,’ said the Duke of York smiling down at her. He wore a long white shirt, carelessly untied at the neck and nothing else. His rosary half concealed a deep scar from his latest seafaring battle.

  James had the same large rounded nose and hooded eyes as his brother the King. His hair was brown and waving, in contrast to Charles’s black curling locks. And it never ceased to amaze James how his indifferent looks drew women, now he was royal. But to the surprise of everyone at court, he’d chosen plain Arabella above far more beautiful girls.

  Arabella opened her eyes again. ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘There’s no conviction in your voice.’ She gave a theatrical sigh. Her smooth features puckered. ‘You won’t do, James,’ she told him. ‘You’d best go back to your wife.’

  James fell back on the bed laughing. ‘What if she won’t have me?’

  ‘She will.’ Arabella stretched out her legs on the white sheets. ‘You’re heir to the throne.’

  James smiled at his mistress. Arabella’s royal connections were low. She had a knightly father and a duke for a brother-in-law. But the moment they’d first met, he knew. She had an angular body and a face that was handsome rather than pretty. But this had never stopped her popularity with men. She was the most entertaining woman he’d ever met.

  Arabella thought for a moment, turning a twist of fine brown hair. ‘Was your wife with you and Charles in Holland?’

  James shook his head. ‘She was the only person who wasn’t,’ he said. ‘Shiploads of people arrived to pay their respects. If it hadn’t been for father’s beheading, it could have been the greatest time of our lives,’ he added, looking wistful.

  Arabella looked at him with interest. She reached to the side of the bed and poured wine into a goblet.

  ‘Better than being brother to a King?’ she asked, passing it to him.

  James took a sip, then ran a hand down her long body.

  ‘We had no royal obligations,’ he said. ‘Plenty of people to buy us drinks and food. And boatloads of pretty women desperate to bed the heir and his brother. We spent four years drunk.’ He smiled at the memory.
‘Then the Sealed Knot came,’ he added, his face falling. ‘They were a Royalist faction sworn to return Charles as King.’

  ‘They wanted you to invade England,’ suggested Arabella, ‘instead of pretty girls? What monsters.’

  James laughed a little, but a ghost of unease was in his eyes.

  ‘One was an alchemist,’ he said, remembering. ‘A good one. Man named Torr. Charles has an interest in such things and visited his experiments. Then something happened. The Sealed Knot unleashed something. Something powerful. Afterwards, no one would speak of it.’

  ‘They conjured a demon?’ suggested Arabella.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said James. ‘Charles only told me of a room with smoking crucibles and liquid metal. But I heard whispers. Lost treasure. Wealth beyond a man’s wildest dreams.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ asked Arabella, enjoying the story.

  ‘Nothing.’ James shrugged. ‘It all seemed to be forgotten. Charles was bedding Lucy Walter and that took all his interest. The Sealed Knot grew tired of waiting for their future King to involve himself in plans to reclaim his country.’

  James frowned in thought. ‘I mentioned it to Charles years later,’ he added. ‘He said the Sealed Knot secrets had been destroyed.’

  ‘If I’d been Charles,’ observed Arabella, ‘I should have busied myself with the soldiers, rather than a silly girl.’

  ‘But you’re a clever woman,’ grinned James. ‘Charles was an eighteen-year-old man. And Lucy was very pretty back then. Extraordinary chest.’ He mimed two domes. ‘Charles thought himself very fortunate. Until he found out about Lucy’s other men,’ added James, grinning.

  ‘But by then Lucy had birthed him a son,’ murmured Arabella, pulling the sheet higher to cover her small breasts. ‘It is a clever thing, to win the favour of a future King when he is low,’ she concluded, taking back the goblet and drinking wine. ‘I would have done the same.’

  ‘You were barely born,’ said James, folding her naked body in the crook of his arm, and tugging the sheet down again. ‘Does that make me a dirty old man?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arabella unhesitatingly. ‘It does.’ She touched her stomach and something shifted in her face. ‘A dirty Catholic old man,’ she added pointedly.