Fire

by C. C. Humphreys

  It was another woman from the cell, Joan. ‘King’s Head on the corner’s ablaze,’ she cried. ‘Some are running past but it looks like everything beyond burns too.’

  There were shops to each side of them, their doors open, the rooms beyond scattered with goods, showing the haste in which the owners had fled. ‘There,’ said Sarah, pointing into one to their right.

  Joan came too and the five of them, babe included, picked their way among the abandoned goods of a grocer’s store. Apples and other fruit were scattered about, dried raisins and nuts in bags. They each picked up what they could, storing the food in their smocks. But they could not linger as the store was filling fast with acrid, drug-laced smoke. A door at the back gave onto a rubbish-strewn alley, which gave in its turn onto another. They wound through three more before they staggered out onto a wider thoroughfare. There was less smoke there, and they paused to breathe deeper, jostled by a vast crowd of people trudging north, the numbers making progress slow. All had their arms filled with possessions, or stacked on a variety of vehicles before them.

  ‘Where you goin’?’

  The man Jenny stopped was pushing a cart laden with expensive-looking rugs, a small dog balanced atop them. He put it down for a moment and straightened with a groan, a hand to his back. ‘The Guildhall,’ he replied. ‘It’s stone, so will not burn. My wares will be safe there.’

  He bent, lifted the cart once more and moved off. ‘He won’t listen,’ said a woman following, holding a basket on her head, a large sack in her other hand. ‘Only safe place is beyond the walls on Moorfields. Stone will bloody burn but grass won’t.’

  ‘My family,’ gasped Joan, and ran away west.

  Jenny turned to Sarah, who’d leant against a wall. ‘What do you reckon?’ she said.

  Sarah had taken off her shawl and was fashioning it into a sling. She took a deep breath. ‘Stone sounds good to me. The Guildhall’s close, is it not?’

  ‘Maybe a quarter mile that way?’

  ‘Then let us go.’ She reached and took her son, over Jenny’s protests. ‘Nay, I’ll take him,’ she said, slipping him into the sling, hoisting him carefully over her back. ‘I warrant I’ll get us both there if we don’t take it too fast.’

  ‘No danger of that,’ replied Jenny.

  They stepped into the slow-moving tide of people, heading north, their backs to the flames. In his sling, Sarah’s nameless son began once more to cry.

  —

  Trinity churchyard. 5 p.m.

  ‘Heave! Two three! Ho! Two three! Heave! Two three! Ho! Two three! And…Heave!’

  With his mighty shout on the last word, Pitman and every man on the fire pole’s ropes gave one last great pull. ‘ ’Ware there!’ shouted their watcher and as one the men dropped the pole and ran. It had been solidly built, the merchant’s house on the shoulder of Trinity churchyard, but it toppled now as all the others had done, the front wall falling out, the others collapsing in, beams, joists and roof tiles tumbling down, dust rising up. ‘Wait!’ commanded Pitman, as the youngest and most eager of the St Mary’s watch, Tom Walker, took a step back, the word and the hand on his shoulder restraining him. The brick chimney, standing proud of the ruin, looked as if it might stay; some did, he knew. Indeed, across the city they were often all that survived destruction. A great swathe of London was already a wilderness of chimneys and church steeples, like fingers thrust up and appealing to a vengeful God.

  He was right to wait. The chimney leaned, swayed and fell. Its crest hit the ground a tall man’s length before him, and one brick detached and rolled onto his foot. He kicked it away. ‘Another!’ he called and the watch of the parish of St Mary-le-Bow moved onto the next house.

  He was proud of his constables. The twenty he’d managed to rally had remained with him and they’d worked hard through the afternoon. He knew that many parishes around could not boast such fellows. Too many were looking out for themselves, gathering what little they could carry and fleeing before the ever-encroaching flames. But a short speech had convinced his men. ‘We fight it there,’ he’d said, in their own churchyard, ‘or we fight it here.’

  No man wanted to witness the devastation they’d seen in the riverside parishes in their own. They’d come, they’d stayed, they’d fought and now they followed him to the next house. His plan was to pull down all the houses along the east–west line of Trinity Lane. He’d like to have cleared the rubble that remained, for each ruin resembled a well-stacked hearth. But his men could not haul it all away and he had no horses, for these were all hired and in traces, being used to remove the victims’ goods. At least, though, he could starve the fire of structures filled with air, for these went up in moments. The roads to the north had more stone houses and would be slower to burn. Any delay could save at least a part of the city. Until the winds drops, he thought, looking up. For I fear that’s the only thing that truly will.

  It showed no sign of it. A different world existed thirty feet above the cobbles. More like a sea, with objects caught in eddies and tides – a fire sea, for everything above glowed or burned outright. Papers, wood shingles, cloth bags, all swooped like birds among thousands of smaller sparks, riding the currents until they fell. One cinder landed even now on Pitman’s cheek and he slapped at it to put it out. They were all forever slapping – their faces, their hair, their clothes. Each one of them had burns where they’d felt the heat too late; each one had patches of hair singed away.

  As they halted before the next house, another three-storey one, large and prosperous, Pitman looked at the men gathered both sides of him. They were all blackened, head to toe, covered in soot, eyes peeping out white in what could almost be a blackamoor’s face. For there was yet another world above the fiery sea, made up of roiling clouds formed from the thousands of smoke columns that spiralled from all the points that burned, shedding soot like rain, covering everything. Yet where the men were not black they were yellow, from strange things that had burnt, as if some great creature had voided the contents of its guts.

  He faced front again. ‘Has it rings, Master Walker?’ he called, and the youth, always the keenest at each beginning, turned from the front wall.

  ‘It do, sir,’ replied the youth, squinting up into the eaves from near the front door.

  ‘Good lad.’ It made it much easier, to grab rings that householders were meant to install for this eventuality and often didn’t. Otherwise they’d have to snag the ridge-beam and that was sometimes hard to get a grip on. ‘Hook ’em,’ he ordered the men beside him, ten to a pole, ‘then we’ll haul away.’

  ‘You will not!’ The man who bellowed this had flung open his front door. Now he roughly grabbed young Walker and shoved him down his front steps. ‘You will not tear down my house. By what right do you think you may?’

  Pitman stepped forward. ‘By right of necessity, sir. Slow the fire here and –’

  ‘I’ll take my chances with the fire. God may preserve me and mine as it has others, for I am a righteous man.’ He took another step down and flapped a hand at them. ‘Move on, I say.’

  ‘I am commanded –’

  ‘By whom, ye rogue?’

  ‘By Lord Craven, who is commanded directly by His Majesty –’

  The man was on his front path now. He looked up and down the street. ‘I don’t see ’em,’ he said. ‘If the king himself comes and asks me I may consider it. Until then,’ he drew himself up, ‘I am king here!’

  Pitman was about to give him one minute to clear his house, and damn his eyes, when Walker, who’d come to stand beside him, tugged his arm. ‘Look,’ he said, jerking his head up.

  Pitman did, and immediately looked down again. ‘Well, Your Majesty, you are about to sit a fiery throne.’ He pointed. ‘Righteous you may be but God has not spared you.’

  The man spun about, looked up and cried out. A patch on his roof was aflame. It was the danger, Pitman knew. That despite all his efforts a burning cinder – or a pigeon – could jump twenty houses and set t
he twenty-first alight.

  The householder turned back, his voice and attitude quite changed. ‘Help me put it out, fellows. I’ll pay you most generously.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll help you,’ replied Pitman. ‘We’ll give you two minutes.’ Then he turned to his men and shouted, ‘Hook ’em!’

  As the constables obeyed, the man ran back into his house and came out again shortly after with three women – his wife and servants – and some children. Clutching the little they could carry, all weeping, they ran away down the street.

  Even in the short time he’d allowed, the roof had been near engulfed in flaming red. It was hotter near the front wall, and tar was beginning to drip down upon him, but Pitman stayed there shouting directions until both rings were engaged. Then he ran back and took up rope.

  ‘Heave! Two three! Ho! Two three! Heave! Two three! Ho! Two three! And…Heave!’

  They flew backwards – the front wall fell out, the flaming roof collapsed and the side and back walls tumbled in with a roar, offset by the higher-pitched crack of shattering windows. They dragged the poles from the rubble, then slapped at themselves and each other, extinguishing the sparks that had flown out in the abolition. ‘Poles, boys,’ he said. ‘Next one.’

  They worked on, even as it grew dark – if a city lit by such a conflagration and bright as a summer’s noonday could be said to darken. House after house fell in dust and rubble, while others took spark and burned. Only when they reached the junction where Bread Street ran north did Pitman allow rest – and that because Lord Craven, assigned to command the fire post in this area of the city, arrived with reinforcements and, to the delight of all, bread and ale.

  Pitman slumped on the ground, gulping both down, turning his head in a slow circle, trying to reckon the destruction, finding it almost impossible. Eastwards, the great arch of flame had passed far beyond where a dying pigeon may have set fire to St Laurence Pountney, whose steeple stood like a lit beacon amidst a ruined land. Over that side of London, the fire appeared to have pushed much further north than where he sat – for no doubt nearer him it had found too much to feed on among the wharves and warehouses upon the riverbank, with their stocks of combustibles – hay, coal, timber, casks of food and liquor – all savouring the air he breathed. He looked south and west to the riverside and saw that the looming bastion of Baynard’s Castle was glowing, like a log about to blaze. Closer still, he could feel the heat building upon his face. The beast – he had begun to think of it as one entire living, ravenous creature – was drawing nearer. Painters’ Hall, less than one hundred yards from him, was burning, and more heat coming, from the houses they’d destroyed to starve the animal.

  He raised his eyes to the yellowing heavens. ‘Merciful Father,’ he said, ‘draw off your mighty wind, I pray you.’

  Then someone spoke. It was a voice he knew, though he had not heard it in a while. ‘So, Pitman, were you so taken with Betterton’s Othello that you thought to play the Moor?’

  ‘Captain Coke!’ Pitman cried, swivelling around to reach out a hand which Coke seized and hauled the bigger man up and into an embrace. ‘By God, man, but I am happy to see thee!’

  ‘That I can tell,’ coughed Coke, his face too close to Pitman’s vast and smutted chest. ‘Jesu, man, I warrant you need a bath.’

  ‘Let me look at you.’ He held his friend at the length of his long arms, studying him up and down. ‘I warrant you, Captain, that if I am dirty you are – hurt.’ He peered closer. ‘I would say you’ve been burned already, were these wounds not close to healed.’

  ‘I was in a fire. Not this one. In battle.’ His eyes darkened. ‘Can you spare a sip of that ale?’

  ‘Aye, man. Drink and tell me all.’ As Coke swigged, he continued, ‘Start with the end, how did you find me?’

  ‘Josiah. It was the devil’s own job getting to your house through London. Even though the west of the city has no flames, the streets are filled with those fleeing them, those marching to fight them.’ He handed the mug back. ‘Most of the streets are blocked by soldiers, those that are not choked with refuge-seekers. I had to dodge and duck about and it is not a part of the town I know well. I came to your house and your son told me you were with the watch, making a stand near here.’

  ‘Where was Bettina?’

  ‘He said she had gone to help some who were burned. I did not stay to enquire more, but came on straight.’

  ‘You did not see the babe?’

  ‘She is delivered?’

  ‘A healthy boy.’

  Coke reached a hand and shook Pitman’s. ‘I wish you well of him. But that brings me to the point, man,’ he swallowed. ‘Where is Sarah? Is she delivered too?’ Pitman sighed, and Coke started, seizing the other’s arms. ‘Nay, tell me straight. Does she live?’

  ‘She does.’ He hesitated. ‘Though she is not well.’

  ‘Has she had the baby? Where is she?’ Coke’s voice rose. ‘I must go to her straight.’

  ‘I will take you to her.’ Pitman looked over the captain’s head. Lord Craven was on horseback, sending messengers off, directing the men he’d brought. It looked like another bout of house-pulling was imminent. ‘My lord,’ he called, ‘may I take a brief absence?’

  His Lordship looked down and smiled. ‘Pitman, isn’t it? The duke told me of you,’ he replied. ‘I know that you and your watch have been most diligent. But you look exhausted, and these whom I have brought are fresh.’ He waved at a group of men, a mix of soldiers and citizens forming to his left. ‘Rest a while, return when you are able. Would one-tenth of London’s men showed your appetite for this fight.’

  ‘I am grateful, my lord.’ Pitman turned to his constables. ‘Back to the parish, lads. Eat, drink, sleep if you can. Rally again when the Bow Bells sound midnight.’ As they rose, picked up their equipment and began to head up Bread Street – near empty now, for all those who lived around had already fled – he took Coke’s arm. ‘Come, sir, and we will seek Mrs Chalker – Coke! Damn me, will I never get that right?’ He shook his head. ‘We shall find her at the Poultry Compter.’

  Coke stopped. ‘The debtors’ prison? Why?’

  ‘For she is a debtor. You both are. Come.’

  They walked, and the dirty story was swiftly told. ‘Oh, I am a fool. A fool!’ cried Coke, striking his forehead. ‘Why did I think to buy us a house?’

  ‘You thought to put a roof over wife and child. It was a worthy aim. You could not know that you were buying it from those who hated you.’

  ‘The Saints, eh?’ He ground his teeth. ‘I will pay them for this.’

  ‘I hope you will get the chance.’ Pitman looked around. ‘If the apocalypse they have prayed for has not come.’

  ‘You think they are behind this?’

  ‘Its genesis? No. I saw how it began, at Farriner’s bakeshop. But its continuation?’ He shrugged. ‘How they will love this. It speaks to all their prophecies. And it would surprise me not at all if they are doing the opposite of us – hastening, not trying to halt, the destruction.’ They’d reached Bow Lane, and St Mary’s steeple was above them. ‘My house. Let us see if Bettina’s returned.’ He raised a hand against the captain’s protest. ‘I must see that my family are well, Captain. And preparing,’ he glanced back the way they’d come, where the smoke spiralled high, ‘for I fear we will be on the move this night. Wait here, or come, as you will. I will be but moments.’

  Coke stamped up the cobbles to Cheapside and out to the middle of the widest avenue in the city. The sight from there nearly had him running, Pitman or no. For the vast dancing crown of flame burned brightest to the east. It had swallowed the Exchange and beyond. Only his uncertainty as to the whereabouts of the Compter kept him shuffling there.

  Pitman was indeed not long – and he did not come alone. ‘Dickon, you are well,’ Coke cried, as the youth ran into his arms.

  ‘Well, enough, Cap’n. Though hot. D-devilishly hot.’ He swung out of Coke’s embrace. ‘Though she was not at Sheere Lane, Sarah.’


  ‘I know. We go for her now. You wait here.’

  ‘Oh no, Cap’n.’ Dickon drew himself up. ‘I come.’

  The gleam in his eye told Coke that this time there would be no arguing. ‘Come then,’ he growled, setting off at pace, Dickon running beside.

  Pitman kept up, though his walk was more of a lurch, propelled by swung foot and stick. ‘Can you not tell me now, man, the reason for your burns?’

  ‘Later,’ replied Coke, striding on.

  Dickon told a little, though his tale emphasised monkeys and leaping about rigging more than burning decks and broadsides.

  Pitman learned enough to whistle and shake his head. ‘You are a fortunate man, Captain,’ he said.

  ‘That we shall see. Which way?’

  ‘Straight.’ He chewed his lip. ‘I did not think it would have reached so far so quickly.’

  Just past the ruins of the Masons’ Hall, Cheapside gave onto Poultry. All the destroyed buildings still smoked, and little fires burned in every one. But the devastation had passed over and most that flame could consume it already had. The monster had moved north, seeking better food.

  ‘Here.’ Pitman halted before the tumbled-down spars and charred remnants of a tavern. Part of King Charles’s face peered up from the ruin, the eyes and crown alone, the rest of the sign burned away.

  ‘Where?’ Coke let his arms rise and fall.

  ‘This is – was – the alley that led to the Compter.’ Pitman pointed along a tangle of devastation. ‘At the top there lay the prison. Come,’ he put a restraining hand on Coke who had placed a foot on a blackened joist, ‘there may be an easier way around.’

  They walked back to Old Jewry, the wider avenue affording slightly easier passage. All the wooden-framed houses between them and the alley had been levelled – if such a rough sea of burnt wood could be called level. Only one structure, made of stone, stood proud of the carnage. ‘That’s the Compter’s storeroom,’ Pitman said. ‘I conversed with Sarah in it not a month since.’