Julia had suffered considerable financial loss throughout the plague. What she had banked for Michael had dwindled fast while she had kept work and wages going with no outlet except the Parisian one. That had helped considerably before coming to an abrupt standstill, and now it was uncertain if it would ever revive. Michael hoped to start selling her ribbons again after a period, but at present they were still associated with the plague in French people’s minds, a fear it would take time to overcome. He also warned that Louis XIV was discouraging the import of foreign goods, wanting France to create for itself in all luxurious crafts. She began to wonder how secure her business was even in England, for fashions were changing and the excessive use of decorative ribbons was on the wane, people much sobered in outlook by the plague. Yet it was not time to sell the business either and she must keep going as best she could.
There were moments when she could have believed that Adam had some project of his own that was keeping him amused and interested. He seemed much happier than in recent months, the brooding, sombre look gone from his eyes. It made him easier to live with, for they quarrelled less, and she responded warmly to this change in him, even though the invisible gulf between them did not diminish in any way.
He took her to the King’s Playhouse when it reopened in August, the ban on some divertissements lifted at last. Nell was not in the production, being in rehearsal for a play in September, but she came to their box during an interval to chatter about her prospects after first recounting how she had spent the time of the plague in Oxford and wanting to know how Adam and Julia had fared.
‘I’m getting my first leading role in The English Monsieur.’ she exclaimed joyfully, leaning back in the chair Adam had vacated for her and kicking her feet with delight as if splashing them in a pool. The chair tilted and would have toppled if Adam had not acted promptly in grabbing it and saving her. She barely noticed in her exuberance. ‘I’m to have my own dressing-room too! They say the King will be coming to the first night. He’s never paid me any attention before that I know of, but he should this time! Have you seen my cloak?’ She stood up and whirled around in a swirl of crimson velvet and wool, ‘It’s my royal livery! All of us players here at the King’s Playhouse have been granted the right to wear it as favoured servants of His Majesty!’
‘It’s very grand!’ Julia said.
Nell twinkled at Adam, always provocative towards attractive men. ‘Does it suit me, do you think?’
‘Handsomely,’ he grinned.
‘Say you’ll both be here for my opening night!’ Merrily she struck a dramatic pose, her hands pressed to her heart.
‘You know we will!’ Julia laughed, extremely glad that Nell should be getting her big chance.
‘We’ll be in this very box!’ Adam promised.
A trumpet sounded, announcing the continuance of the performance and Nell left them to rejoin friends in the pit. Adam sat down again and reached for Julia’s hand and held it. She glanced at him. He was looking at the stage, his face illumined by the lights into planes and shadows, a smile still on his lips. Everything had eased for them during that ten minutes of Nell’s light-heartedness. If only it could be the start of their drawing close again! This time she would have so much more of herself to give, for it would include her whole heart.
It was the Saturday morning of the same week of hearing Nell’s good news that Julia spotted Christopher standing on the steps of St Paul’s. She was in a sedan chair and on her way to Carter Lane for a morning visit, but told her bearers to halt. Paying them off, she went up the flight to him. He had his back to her, his feet set apart, his elbows jutting and his hands on his hips as, with his head tilted back, he gazed upwards at the Cathedral’s classical portico. It had been added to the medieval edifice over a quarter of a century earlier by Katherine’s old enemy, the cutter-up of Queen Elizabeth’s gowns — Inigo Jones. Dedicated to the patron saint of London, the edifice had stood here since 1087 when it replaced a wooden one built in 604 that had burned down.
She hesitated for a few moments before speaking. It was to be the first time they had seen each other since parting in the Cour Royale, although they had exchanged letters at Christmas. She found her voice. ‘Good day, sir.’
He turned swiftly, knowing her voice anywhere, and his face broke into a broad smile. ‘Julia! Of all the most welcome surprises!’
As he took up her hand to kiss it she realized it was the first time she had not felt almost faint with excitement at being with him again. Instead there was the warmth of affection that one directed towards a good friend, known over a long period of time.
‘Are you about to start the restoration work that you told me about?’ she asked, glancing at the Cathedral, ‘I suppose the plague delayed you.’
‘It did, but I intend to spend all my time here now from this first day of September to at least the middle of the month trying to solve a few more of the problems that I’ve discovered since my preliminary inspections.’
‘I shouldn’t hinder you.’
‘Nonsense! We haven’t talked for a long time and I want to hear about everyone at Sotherleigh. Come into the Cathedral with me. I have a couple of fellow surveyors measuring up there.’
They entered the Cathedral to a buzz of noise. These great edifices were always the hub of community life, for when religious services were not demanding the whole expanse of the buildings the aisles were used for commerce. Stalls were set up and marketing and bargaining took place. Libertymen and Freemen of the various guilds sometimes held meetings there for convenience and in winter chestnuts and potatoes were baked over braziers of charcoal, providing heat and refreshment at the same time. By one of the memorials those seeking employment would stand hopefully, a tool of trade in hand to announce their calling.
Christopher and Julia were met by one of the virgers, who escorted them up the main aisle to the stalls in the choir where they sat side by side and talked for quite a while about Anne and Mary, of Sophie’s dreadful fate and whether Michael would come home more often in his changed circumstances. Julia had had a recent letter from Faith and knew that life in Bletchingdon was continuing its peaceful course.
‘And what of Adam and you, Julia?’
She meant to answer him lightly, but the unhappiness of the past months had built up in her to such an extent that at his quietly voiced question her composure cracked. Tears started to her eyes and she pressed the back of her hand against her suddenly trembling lips.
‘I took too long to discover how much I loved him. You know why, Christopher.’ There was no point in not speaking frankly. ‘As a result I’ve driven him from me.’
‘That’s not possible. He risked his life to save yours.’
‘And he would again, I know. But what could have been between us is lost.’
He shook his head. ‘That is something I can’t believe. You’re mistaken. All marriages have setbacks. This will prove a passing phase. You’re not in total disagreement?’
‘No. There are moments when I imagine that things have improved slightly, and then I’m uncertain again. Maybe I’m looking too hard, searching for a will-o’-the-wisp that isn’t really there.’ She broke off, her throat aching with the tears she was holding back, anguish in her face.
He leaned towards her. ‘Listen to me. We’ve talked of your childhood dream before. Do you still have it?’
‘Never. It’s gone and perhaps all I ever really wanted has gone with it.’
‘Try to think that I’ve been keeping your share with mine. It will come back to you.’ He took her hands in both of his. It was as if he were trying to instill hope in her from some inner knowledge that belonged to him alone. ‘All will be well in time. I’m sure of it.’
She managed a wan smile, wiping the glitter of unshed tears with the back of a finger from one eye and then the other. ‘At least I feel better through talking to you.’
‘If you want to talk again I’ll be here at St Paul’s, as I told you, for the next two w
eeks.’
*
Even if Julia had wished to take advantage of Christopher’s offer to talk it was not to prove possible. She was awoken in the early hours of the following morning by the rattling of an inner shutter that had not been fully folded back on its hinges by the open window. Careful not to disturb Adam, who lay deep in sleep, she lowered her feet to the floor and padded across to the window, pushing her hair back with both hands. A coolish easterly wind billowed her nightgown through the open window and, as she pressed the shutter back into place, she noticed a sinister reddish glow in a little patch against the sky somewhere in a distant part of the City.
Resting her hands on the window ledge, she stood for a few minutes trying to judge whereabouts it was, but it could have been in any one of a hundred streets or alleyways. Fires were not unusual and sometimes a whole row of houses would burn down when they were joined without party walls as so many were, Alice’s old home and that from which she had rescued Katy being typical of thousands. She could imagine the scene with hand-squirts taking water from the conduits, bucket chains in progress and men with hooks pulling down parts of the burning buildings to keep the fire from spreading. As she went back to bed she hoped for the sake of everyone in the area that the fire would soon be extinguished. It would not be a peaceful Sunday for either the fire-fighters or those who had already lost their homes.
When she stirred again it was morning. Adam had left the bed and was tying the cords of his robe as he stood by the window, his attention caught by what he could see from there.
‘There’s quite a bad fire somewhere in the City,’ he said with a frown.
She took up her own robe from where Molly always placed it nightly across a chair near her bed. ‘I saw it when I woke in the night.’
‘What was it like then?’
‘Just a small fire.’ She reached his side and she gasped at the sight that met her. Great clouds of thick, black smoke were billowing upwards over the City. More streets than one had fallen to the fire. ‘Where do you think it is?’
‘It’s certainly near the Bridge. Unless this easterly wind changes there should be no danger of the fire reaching the gunpowder that is stored at the Tower, but I hope the firefighters are making sure the flames don’t reach any of the warehouses. They hold every kind of inflammable goods from barrels of lamp oil and tallow to sea coal, timber, tar, pitch and resin.’
She thought also of the stores of hay and straw at the stables of every tavern, and the byres where milking cows were kept, the wine shops with casks of spirits and printers with reams of paper. And everywhere the weather-boarding and wood that the dry summer had turned to tinder. ‘Do you suppose my workshop is in any danger? I have a very valuable stock of ribbons waiting for shipment to Michael and equally large supplies ready for the most important orders I’ve had since the plague.’
‘We can hail a ferry-boat and take a look later to see exactly where the fire is located, but you need have no fear that it is anywhere near Carter Lane. See!’ He pointed to the tower of St Paul’s, which could be clearly seen on the brow of the building-covered hump on which the City was centred. ‘The fire is nowhere near there.’
While he went to bathe and make ready for the day, Molly came to attend to her and was full of what she had heard about the fire. ‘They say it started in the small hours at a bakery in Pudding Lane, my lady. Soon it had spread the length and breadth of Fish Hill Street. Rows of houses there are built back to back with those facing Bread Street and they all went at the same time. The fire melted the lead pipes of the conduit there, cutting off water where it was most needed, and it burnt up the water-wheels.’
‘They were near the Bridge. What of that?’
‘Saved by a gap in the buildings on it, which also prevented the fire from crossing the river.’
‘How do you know all this?’
Molly hesitated. She could not give away the footman who had witnessed the start of the fire through staying late at a tavern before creeping back into the house through a kitchen window. He had even seen the Lord Mayor arrive on horseback and fall into a temper at having been awoken from sleep for what at first sight appeared to be a smallish outbreak. Declaring to the fire-fighters that it could be pissed out, the Lord Mayor had ridden off to his bed again. She did not doubt that he had more than changed his mind now.
‘The milkmaid could talk of nothing else when she was here with her buckets about half an hour ago,’ she replied truthfully.
‘Where is the fire now?’
‘Taking loaded barges at the quayside and the warehouses in Thames Street while the church of St Magnus is burning like a torch.’
Julia shook her head at such dreadful tidings. ‘Let’s hope there’s no great loss of life.’
Later that morning Adam hired a ferry-boat and they were among many going by river to see what was happening. The smell of smoke became strong and wafted down over the wind-rippled water as they drew nearer the Bridge, bringing with it the yeasty aroma of ale boiling in vats at the burning breweries. The roaring flames were chasing people out of buildings everywhere. None of them paused to make any attempt to save the properties, but bundled their possessions down into waiting ferry-boats and other small vessels that had come to take advantage of the situation. One man whose coat-tails were on fire jumped into the river and was rescued by a waterman, who hauled him up into a boat.
With a splash of oars a waterman brought Mr Pepys alongside the Warrenders’ boat. ‘This is a sad and sorrowful business,’ he said, his face grave. ‘I’ve just come down from a high viewpoint in the Tower and it was a terrible sight. One of our finest Livery Halls in the City, the ancient Fishmongers’ Hall, is burning and I’ll have no more dinners at the Swan Inn.’ He heaved a sigh, ‘I’m going now to report the state of the fire to Whitehall. At that end of London nobody can have any idea what is happening here.’
‘I agree.’ Adam gave a nod. ‘From our house we could see that this fire was more than usual, but we had expected to find it under control. In this case the old law is at fault. I mean the one that decrees if a man pulls down another’s house he must rebuild it, that must be proving a deterrent to creating the necessary fire-breaks.’
‘I intend to mention that. Now I must away to the King and afterwards to bury my wine and some good cheese in the garden in case my wife and I have to move hastily with whatever possessions we can take with us.’
‘God speed you, sir.’
Upon returning home, he and Julia found a friend waiting, whose house was one caught by the fire. He had a wagonload of goods behind his coach that he wanted to store temporarily in their cellar. They agreed and offered him hospitality as well, but he declined the invitation. His coachman was driving him back to his daughter’s house in Cannon Street in case it should prove necessary to evacuate her and her children should the fire spread, whereupon he would take them to his country seat. Apart from this visit, Sunday passed much the same in the Strand as it did everywhere else in London not affected by the fire. Church bells rang for services. Adam and Julia were among one of more than a hundred congregations gathering quietly while in a few less fortunate churches the flames were bringing bells crashing down and melting altar plate that could not be saved in time.
That evening Adam and Julia went again to view the fire. It had spread widely since the morning and the heat was so great that there was no question of getting close, for even in the middle of the river it scorched their faces and there was constant danger from firebrands hurtling through the air to plunge hissing into the water. The river was a throng of boats of every kind carrying people, their belongings piled high, to safety at Westminster or across to the other side. Julia found it touching to see what had been grabbed in flight. Many had taken lutes and violins, clocks and rolled-up rugs. One woman, gazing blankly with shock, clutched a bird-cage. Dogs and cats had been taken too. The whole scene was as bright as day from the fire’s awful glare, the moon being almost eclipsed by the pall of smoke.
By morning every Londoner realized the extent of the danger, for the fire had spread so rapidly in the night that the streets had become a flow of people fleeing from its relentless path. Julia realized what Adam was going to do when she saw he had donned a leather jerkin and gauntlets before thrusting an axe into his belt. He saw her anxious expression and grinned, flicking the end of her chin with his finger.
‘Don’t worry. I have to give what help I can. Too many people have been made homeless and I can’t stand by and see more of London’s treasures lost.’
‘All I ask is that you take care!’
‘I will. Every one of the men-servants has volunteered to come with me. I shall report to one of the fireposts being manned throughout the City and we’ll be directed from there to points where we are most needed.’
She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him as if he were going off to war. His mouth responded passionately to hers and as they drew apart he gave her a deep and searching look.
‘There are times, Julia, when — ’ Then he broke off brusquely. ‘I must go. Every minute counts. I’ll be back when the fire is under control.’
She went outside to watch him leave by the main gates into the Strand with the men-servants, who were not in their velvet livery today, but protectively attired. Then she turned about to run down the sloping path between lawns and flowerbeds to peer over the parapet at the riverside and watch him board one of two ferry-boats drawn up by steps where she had landed when coming home from France in the plague. Although she waved he did not see her, not expecting her to be there in any case. She stayed by a parapet until the two boats disappeared into the smoke wafting up the river.
That night Adam did not come home. She stood at the window for a long time, wondering where he might be and aghast at the horribly increased width of the expanse of flame that created an arc of fearful light across the City. During the day there had been optimistic talk with those who had called on her from Whitehall that the flames could be checked by fire-breaks, the King having given orders for any means of halting the fire to be used, and it seemed certain it would never reach Carter Lane. None of her workers would have been at the workshop in any case, for the entire life of the City had stopped as if the hands of a clock had been checked. At least she could be sure that they were all safe, for none lived where the fire had started and they would have had sufficient warning to leave their homes, unlike the time of the plague when danger could come without notice. She gave a sympathetic thought to Nell, whose chance to play a major role before the King would have to be postponed, and who could say when the time for play-going would come again?
Circle of Pearls Page 64
