Irregularity
Page 11
Through the twilight I wandered the streets. Much of the rubble has cleared away months before, and new houses built, and yet amidst it all a few old houses still stand; was it Nature, capricious as a girl, or our all-seeing God, that saw fit to destroy entire streets, save a single humble dwelling here and there? I strive to find these structures and talk to those who inhabit them; I wish to discover the reason their homes were spared and they are willing to talk to me for the price of a mug of ale, sometimes less.
Tonight I found two ancient men, brothers, their bodies decayed but their minds fresh and sharp, who lived on Honey Lane, hard by the Church of All Hallows, which was destroyed in the fire. Yet their hovel, from which they sold thread and buttons and some herbs for poultices, was spared. I spent several hours with them in their lodgings, which were appalling, and how many things we discussed. The brothers claimed to have lived on Honey Street for forty years or more, though neither could count beyond ten they made repeated reference to having opened their shop during the early reign of Charles I which was, I admit, fascinating; imagine having been present for his coronation parade and his execution! Though these men made no such claim to the latter, they did demonstrate that remarkable facility for memory that is so common amongst the uneducated classes, repeating what can only have been verbatim the recollections of another who did see the unfortunate monarch lose his head — a local boy who climbed to the top of the Banqueting House to watch the festivities.
These humble men have the city in their blood, their souls; they wept at the recollection of fleeing the fire with what few meagre possessions they could collect in the dead of night and returning, weeks later, certain to find everything gone — their lives laid to waste, their shop and livelihood vanished forever beneath the dust and ashes. And yet, in His infinite wisdom, God saw fit to spare them. The elder recalled, with tears streaming down his face, kicking aside timbers that still smoked, embers that yet glowed with life on either side of their little home, hoping to save it from the risk of a further conflagration. Now, as the city slowly begins to rebuild, they remain, yet selling their thread and their buttons.
Why did you return, I asked, and why do you stay? How could they not, where they had known everything, they told me. The fields where the refugees have fled stink with effluence, the piteous screams of the children who know nothing but want and chill. Dreadful as is the state of the street where they have long lived, still it is preferable to the alternative; of shuddering in shacks built from half-burnt timbers and broken bricks, of hay and old clothes.
Finally I asked, as I always do: and what of the cathedral?
Ah, they said, God saw fit to spare us, but not the cathedral. They said their own father told them of the lightning strike and the fire that caused the spire to collapse and burn, and his father before him of the fires that raged through the cathedral year on year. They themselves spoke of the trade that was wont to occur in the nave, the zealous men who preached blasphemy in the transept. Perhaps, they said, perhaps God has passed judgement upon St Paul’s and the vices of Ludgate Hill. Perhaps the cathedral should not be rebuilt but left to crumble, testament to the vices of man and the judgement of God.
7 June 1667
Extraordinary discovery in the crypts today; a monument from Elizabeth’s reign, a carven man, nearly whole and unharmed by the fire or subsequent exposure. Nor the looting which I am appalled to note continues, despite our constant presence on Ludgate Hill.
I was engaged in outlining the easternmost wall of the apse when I discovered the monument; he with his starched collar and pantaloons, missing only his nose: and that may have been the work of vandals a century before! Blackened but uncracked he lay, considering the afterlife, his hands forever folded upon his chest in the attitude of prayer. Constantly am I astounded by the power of the fire; when every time I find a new stone cracked down the centre and I know it owes its wounds to a heat so intense only hellfire could outmatch it, and yet, here a simple carving that withstood even that. I felt in that moment of discovery God’s grace alight upon my shoulders and the shoulders of all around me; truly we do His work in rebuilding our monuments to Him.
And yet, I find I cannot forget the warnings of those ancient brothers in Honey Street. Perhaps this monument is not evidence that God favours our great project, but an accident, an oversight.
A warning.
I am troubled tonight, and sleep eludes me.
15 June 1667
One of the stonemasons, uncovered a most curious artefact early this morning, in the churchyard, a stone covered in curious markings. W grew very excited and had it carried to his house to consider it at his leisure. He later came away to tell us the carvings were the writing of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, those who lived here after Rome fell and before the conquest: the Dark Ages of Man, so called.
I neglected to mention that I had found a similarly carven stone in the north-eastern wall of the crypt beneath the apse weeks ago, though mine is much smaller, and likely more recent, for the carvings were in Latin. It must be a fragment of a monument, though the work is surprisingly crude. I could only make out one word: resurgemus. We shall rise again. A fitting epitaph for the cathedral, truly! We are told to report any such discoveries immediately but many of us do not, especially if they are small; I carried my stone away to show Mary; such curiosities and my stories of them do enliven her long days abed. Let W keep his large stone and all the glory of it. He does not know all the secrets the cathedral bears, nor does he need to.
15 July 1667
An accident; the scaffolding in the crypt beneath the apse collapsed towards the end of the day and a man was pulled from the rubble with his leg broken. He had been knocked insensible by the fall and woke screaming of rats, though I saw none; nay, I have never seen one amongst the ruin.
Another sleepless night; though I dropped off, I dreamt of children slinging stones at birds and woke with a jolt, and sleep proved again elusive. I arose and walked to Pudding Lane where the conflagration had its origin; many houses there are now rebuilt and I smelled good clean cooking smoke lingering in the air from the evening’s banked fires. But I was not soothed; through the streets remain dark corners, gaping black basements and piles of rubble where the stink of that earlier fire clings on. How desperately we have tried to brush it all away in the three years since it settled into the city’s grooves and gaps; how singularly we have failed.
The land at Fish Hill at the bottom of Pudding Lane has been cleared and W is considering plans to erect a Monument to the Fire. I am not involved in the Monument and know little of it, only that W is bedevilled with indecision as to the design and structure as he wishes to construct too many things at once: a monument; as well as an observatory from which the curious may overlook London’s rebirth, a hundred feet in the sky; and some manner of astronomical tower also, by which he means to impress H and L and a host of others of his knowledgeable Society. Perhaps he should contain himself and build a monument to God alone.
Tonight, though, the site was silent and empty but for the rats that survive everywhere and everything: the Plague, the fire. Blasphemous thoughts filled my mind as I wandered amongst the empty streets: how many of their kind did God spare, compared to man; how quickly do they refound their society and return to the city their ancestors have lived in as long as ours — while we are crippled with indecision, prey to too many ideas, unable or unwilling to grant that God may have a plan for us that our own pitiful dreams cannot and should not supersede.
The rats have returned to the city; for them it is the same as it ever was.
The rats who are to be found everywhere but among the ruins of St Paul’s.
2 August 1667
I have asked at St Paul’s whether any man has seen rats, or evidence of them, among the ruins, but no one has observed so much as a harvest mouse. I then asked whether they did not find this absence queer, but some said they wondered whether the smoke and ash kept the rats away, and others merely that it was evidence that the si
te is a holy place and God has seen fit to ban vermin from it.
22 August 1667
No discovery this time but a sighting. Instead a stonemason rushed from where the north aisle still stands, in part, crying that he had seen a monk appear from nowhere and then stride across the nave to vanish into a wall. This story, naturally enough, occasioned much excitement and work was halted for an hour or more while men scrambled about the wall where the spirit was said to have disappeared. I made a study of it myself, for as it happened I could hear the hue and cry even in the crypt beneath the apse where I find myself ever more drawn. Perhaps I hope for another curious find to pair with my carven rock, although what of the crypt in this part of the cathedral that can be cleared has been already. W visits daily to inspect our progress and I see him shaking his head as he draws his fingers along the soot-blackened stones. I begin to wonder whether the damage is too extensive to repair, for after three years’ effort we are yet regularly plagued by accidents and the walls seem to crumble at the lightest touch.
The days are become shorter but the growing darkness still does not ease my sleeplessness. I fall asleep easily enough but my dreams, my dreams: I pull the stone I gave Mary from the north-eastern wall and a sea of rats come tumbling out; they overwhelm me, filling the darkness of the crypt with their dreadful presence until, in a blaze of unholy light, I wake, screaming.
I have taken to sleeping apart from Mary so that I do not disturb her.
23 August 1667
Three men failed to appear when the bell was rung this morning and I believe I am to blame, at least in part. It is no unusual thing for labourers to appear and disappear without notice, and at first I thought nothing of it. Toward the end of the day, however, I overheard two men discussing the three who had not returned to the cathedral; they spoke in hushed tones but I was seated nearby, and they did not see me. They were men I had asked previously about the rats; after I had raised the issue with them they had asked others and the word spread; no one had seen a rat on the church grounds in all our time here. The three men who left and never returned, so I overheard, were amongst those asked, and, being of some vile pagan superstition, they announced their belief that the cathedral is cursed — although for my part I should think an absence of rats a blessing!
And yet I turn the many incidences of fire that have plagued this edifice, and those before it, over and over in my mind: some house of worship has existed atop this hill for millennia, and each one has been met with ruin. I have begun to come to the cathedral grounds at night, when I cannot sleep; the nights are longer now and very dark. The night watchman allows me, for I am willing to make his rounds in his place, while I puzzle over the questions that plague me. Perhaps my nightly perambulations will uncover some secret that will set my soul at ease.
9 September 1667
I sleep very little now yet I am not tired; I work during the day with feverish energy and at night I walk and walk and walk. Dear Mary sleeps most of the day now, so she does not miss me — though I wish I had recourse once more to her sensible and well-ordered mind. The others at the cathedral leave me to my work and speak to me little; we all prefer it that way.
27 September 1667
The cathedral will not sustain a cat. I brought one two nights ago during another of my perambulations — a great tom with a white streak down its nose. I set it beside the north-eastern wall in the crypt and it bristled and hissed, backing away from the stones, staring wild-eyed in every direction before streaking off. Today a wall beneath the south transept crumbled and the labourers shouted out, for they had discovered a cat’s carcass therein, much aged and dried out. We all went to examine the object and it could not have been my cat, which was alive and well but a day earlier, whereas this animal must have been dead for decades. But how did such a small thing, dry and brittle as last year’s leaves, survive the fire, which burned so strong to crack even great stones? And was it merely my sleepless imagining that saw the same white blaze upon this animal’s face as was on the one I carried hither? Was it covered in tiny bites? Was it merely the contraction of muscles following death that pulled the creature’s face into that grimace of fear?
The animal was shown to W, of course, and then tossed into a pile of rubble; I intend to return tonight and bury it. Or burn it.
17 October
I have slept better since the discovery of the cat, but now Mary is restive, and speaks to me of her dreams. Rats, she says, her eyes red-rimmed and feverish, hundreds upon hundreds come bubbling up from the ground beneath the unburnt cathedral atop Ludgate Hill (she has never seen it since its ruin) and swarm in all directions down into the city, overcoming all in their path, eating and eating until there is nothing left… with hellish speed they overtake the city until the streets are flooded as though the river had risen, but it is rats, rats, rats. I have taken to reassuring her that there are no rats at St Paul’s, and do not tell her of my own dream, the same every night now; it is terrible enough that I fear sleep even as I crave it…
I walk up Ludgate Hill to St Paul’s; in my dream it is not a ruin, but whole and complete, even including the spire no man has seen in living memory: it is a moonless night and the city is dark, and I approach the west facade which is not as it was before the fire, following Jones’ restoration of three decades previous, but older, crumbling, magnificent; the great cathedral of an ancienter city than ours. As I draw near penitents emerge from the building in two long, silent rows; they are draped in pale shrouds from head to toe and their gait is smooth and regular; they pass me by so silently I cannot hear so much as the rustle of the fabric that covers them, the whisper of their footsteps upon the earth. I enter the cathedral as they leave, and it is lit by an unearthly glow, as moonlight, though there is no moon; I see that it is the stones themselves, glowing; I wish to cross myself but my arms are heavy and my hands are still of their own accord. I am drawn with sure steps through the nave and through the quire until I reach the apse and then my hands are freed; I reach up and touch a stone and it depresses to reveal a hidden staircase; I descend and I am in the crypt, but it is not the crypt as I have known; the ceiling is held aloft by fluted pillars; the floor is not our solid flagstones but tiny coloured tiles, a mosaic as I have seen in Bath; even in the cold light I could glimpse terrible shapes amongst them; snakes and dogs and rats and pagan gods… The crypt too glows with an unearthly light, here even brighter than before, the stones blazing so they seem afire.
There, at the easternmost point along the crypt wall, I see it: my stone, the one I carried away for Mary all those months ago, set low in the wall. I kneel before it and pull it away, and discover it is concealing a hole the size of my fist, and even the pagan light that fills the cathedral cannot penetrate the darkness beyond. Yet I am compelled, I am driven to reach my hand inside and I, horror of horrors! I feel something within, small and furred, and I snatch my hand back but not before a sharp pain overcomes me; I withdraw my hand and I am bleeding as though bitten; and then, dear sweet God in Heaven, a rat huge and black, with eyes as yellow as the sun, and then a second and a third, tumble forth as water from a spring, and more behind them, and more behind them, and I scramble back but I fall and I am overwhelmed as a flood of rats boils forth and over me and out, up every flight of stairs, even climbing the columns and the monuments, blocking out even that unholy light, and I —
1 November
Neither of us has slept in weeks and Mary is as ill as I have ever seen her, starting at every noise, her eyes wild and staring, her thin hands clutching and clutching. I have made a decision. Tonight I shall replace the stone where I found it. There is no moon tonight and I fear the realisation of my terrible dream even as I know, I know, I know it cannot come to pass; the old cathedral is ruined, the Romans are dust and ashes; my God is the one true God, pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum, adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Resergemus resergemus resergemus.
4 November
And as he spoke a great rumbling began and the ground shook and the wall before which we stood, that cursed north-eastern wall, began to crack; great rents appeared across the faces of the stones still black from the fire even as we stood there aghast and then, as one, we turned and ran. Dust poured from the ruin and the sound, the sound was as thunder, as we — master and men alike — hurtled down the hill, but the cursed ruin did not fall.
Later W insisted we return to survey the damage; I was certain no power could compel me thither but W took me by the arm and said in a low voice that no man knew the eastern crypt better than I; that my services were invaluable and must be made use of; and I in my vanity allowed myself to be seduced, compelled to return once more. There was very little destruction, in truth, though we were horrified to find that the north-eastern wall had collapsed entirely and beyond — it was only the two of us who saw what lay beyond, a great cavern, so dark and deep light could only penetrate a few feet into it, and neither of us were willing to step therein, for we could discern what carpeted the ground: a sea of tiny white bones, the mortal remains of more rats than a man could count in a lifetime, stretching as far as the eye could see, cold as moonlight in that unholy darkness.