Fire

by C. C. Humphreys

  For go back I must, he thought, snagging a satchel and, between bites and gulps, filling it with some crusts, nuts, cheese and two bottles of ale. The idea of rising from the chair he’d sunk into and venturing again into that hell was daunting. But he knew he had no choice.

  ‘But why?’ Sarah said when he came to tell her. The actresses who’d been fussing around withdrew at the anguish in her voice.

  ‘I made two promises. Betterton reminded me of one – to my king, who is indeed out there striving to save the city, to halt the fire within the walls. For if we do not,’ he shrugged, ‘it could rage past and destroy Whitehall and Westminster – here. All of London, within and without the walls, will be consumed. I would not see that.’

  She stared at him, then nodded. ‘And the second promise?’

  ‘Was to Pitman. Aye, I found him in the heart of the fight and ’twas he who told me of –’ he faltered, ‘of you, and your travails. He guided me to the burnt-out Compter, then returned for his own family, his parish. I promised I would go back to help him.’ He took both her hands. ‘Listen to this, Sarah. He believes our enemies, those who practised so upon us, are about their mischief again out there.’

  ‘The Saints burned down the city?’

  ‘Not that, perhaps. But all their prophecies point to an apocalypse. One that is foretold to happen now, this year, even these days.’ He nodded to the world outside, to the roar of devastation, distant yet distinct. ‘I do not know if this is the apocalypse – but it will certainly do until the real one arrives.’

  She laughed, as he hoped she would, and he rose on that, still holding her hands. She hugged them hard. ‘You will not – not take too many risks?’

  ‘I?’ He smiled.

  She did not. Instead she hugged him fiercely. ‘I mean it, Captain. I have lost enough. I will not lose you.’

  ‘You will not. Trust me.’

  ‘I do.’

  They kissed, he bowed, then made for the door. Dickon leapt up there. ‘Are we off, Cap’n?’ he asked, his mouth crammed with food.

  ‘I am. You must stay here, safe.’

  ‘Ha!’ Dickon obviously thought that was the funniest thing in the world for he sprayed bread and cheese onto his captain’s breeches.

  ‘Come then,’ Coke sighed, leading the way. A thought came when he passed Thomas Betterton. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘do you possess a brace of pistols?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘May I borrow ’em?’ He saw the man hesitate. ‘You know I am the king’s man. His Majesty asked me to return in arms.’

  ‘Oh, indeed.’ The player went and returned with a box – and a sword. ‘Thought you might need this too.’

  ‘I am grateful, sir,’ Coke replied, buckling it on, ‘for I have a feeling that I will.’

  St Paul’s Cathedral. 6 p.m.

  How is it still there? marvelled the man so many sought, the man of blood. It looks more like a carrack in a black sea than a cathedral.

  The flames had devoured almost every structure around it. A few discoloured stones remained; a wall here, a steeple there, a brick doorway giving entrance only to ruin. The fire had moved on, leapt the Fleet river two hours since, mocking the puny efforts to halt it there. Now it raged in districts beyond the ditch, above and below Fleet Street, ravaging both foul Alsatia and the fine lawyers’ chambers of the King’s Bench with indiscriminate joy. Yet somehow it had bypassed the cathedral.

  Until now. Even as Captain Blood watched, he saw yet another flame under one of the boards that covered the much-holed roof. Though men were up there, precariously perched, drawing up buckets on ropes from below and hurling water as fast as they were able, he could see their efforts would be futile.

  ‘Old St Paul’s is burning down,’ he sang to a popular tune about a different London landmark, adding in speech, ‘and a good riddance to it.’

  It was not so much that it was ugly, its great square and spireless tower and multiple patchings giving it the aspect of a bunched and mottled toad. He had visited cathedrals in Europe, in order to study the houses of his enemy, the Antichrist, the Pope. Most, he would grudgingly admit, had at least some grandeur, some beauty about them. St Paul’s had none. But since it was also the centre of the Anglican faith he despised, the sooner it was reduced to ash the better.

  The stone tower he occupied had survived the devastation of its church, St Austin’s, its blackened stone steps allowing him to mount to its bell tower, even though the bell itself had melted and covered his perch in lead, only now beginning to harden again. It still gave him the view, not only of the cathedral’s unfolding destruction, but the churchyard to the north and the one house that still stood there. Where his brother Saints would even now be gathering, according to the youth, Daniel, he’d encountered.

  He stared at it, marvelling how some confluence of wind, some diligence of man, some indulgence of God had left the house standing. Before it, men scurried, shouting, and running at the cathedral with buckets, ropes and axes.

  Not long now, he thought, picking up the weapon beside him, putting the hog-back stock to his shoulder, lining the front and rear sights up on a man standing just in front of the house, his hands on his head. ‘Pff!’ Blood breathed out on the sound. It was as if the man felt something, so suddenly did he drop his hands and run.

  Carefully he put the gun beside him, and took out and placed his monocle to his eye, the better to study the weapon’s breech and the letters engraved on steel upon it. One Christian Reich had made it in Westphalia and it was the best thing Blood had brought back from Holland. It was a Müller-Büchse, a type of wheel-lock – far better than a flintlock, for it so rarely misfired. Best of all, it had a rifled barrel. A hunter’s gun, it hardly threw at all, unlike a smooth-bored musket. He would not have attempted what he must do with one of those. With this superb tool, he knew he could make the shot. One hundred and fifty yards perhaps, with the wind following straight and not swerving the ball at all? He’d knocked a seagull off a roof in Harwich at two hundred yards in a crosswind with this weapon, just for the practice. But I am not hunting seagulls today, he thought, and licked his lips.

  There was a stirring near the churchyard’s entrance. A larger group of men was pushing in, armed with tools to fight the fire, several dragging a sled on which a large brass squirt was fixed. These newcomers looked organised, determined. Not surprising, perhaps, since they were in the presence of their king.

  Charles, his brother mounted beside him, rode into St Paul’s churchyard. Dropping the monocle into a pocket, Blood picked up the gun, laid it in front of him, resting it on the lead-covered stone before him, and lined up the sights.

  ‘Pff,’ he breathed.

  —

  St Paul’s Cathedral. 6 p.m.

  ‘He told me he would be here,’ Daniel said, squirming in Simeon’s grip. ‘He promised.’

  ‘And you told him the house on the north side? As I instructed you.’

  ‘Yes. Yes!’ Daniel wriggled out of the grip, rubbing his arm.

  ‘Hmm. He’d best come soon. For I fear the king will. And Captain Blood would not want to miss that.’

  Looking through glass that was bowed but not melted, Simeon peered again from the one house standing on Paternoster Row, out into St Paul’s churchyard. As soon as he’d seen it, he’d known that God had preserved it especially for his Saints – for this moment to come. It was the perfect place to view the destruction of the cathedral – as the king and his brother must realise. Rumour had put Charles at every scene of greatest destruction during the previous three days: Baynard’s Castle, the conflagration of the Exchange, the gutting of the Guildhall. He would surely come as the very centre of religion in his kingdom burned. He would try in vain to stop it. He would stand before them here.

  Yet, despite all the scurrying before it, not one person had tried to enter the house. The roof had been scorched, its beams charred. People had learned that the inferno could pass by, breathe on a house merely, and then move on. But
within hours the structure would still tumble into a smoking ruin. He would not have taken shelter here had he not had this purpose. Had he not been sure that King Jesus kept this house for his Saints.

  He looked at the others now. Hopkinson was rechecking the muskets. He had been the champion marksman of the regiment. A hunter still, he’d lost none of his skills. Tremlett, if less accurate, had always been steady under fire. He had vouchsafed that, when the two of them aimed for the king, he would shoot the Duke of York. At twenty paces, how could any of them miss?

  Daniel, who’d come to peer through the window, suddenly cried out. ‘There! There! It burns.’

  They all looked out. The cathedral roof was indeed fully alight now, the fire spreading fast. But under the growing roar, Simeon heard something else. ‘It is time, brothers,’ Simeon said, stepping away. ‘As we used to say in the regiment: “Raise your weapon to the enemy and your voices to God.” ’ He went and picked up his musket, as did the brewer and the builder. ‘Our Father,’ he began, and the others joined in, ‘who art in heaven…’

  The noise he’d heard was growing outside. Not only the panicked shouts of those trying to stop the inevitable – but the cheers for someone approaching, someone special. But he did not stop the chant. There was time enough to finish the prayer and kill a king.

  —

  St Paul’s Cathedral. 6 p.m.

  ‘Will they save it?’ asked Coke, staring up at the roof of St Paul’s and the fast-spreading flames.

  ‘No,’ replied Pitman, lowering the flask, the last of the beer now drunk. ‘I have seen enough these last days to know the way of it.’ He reached out a hand, and Coke pulled him up. On his feet, the big man bent and rubbed at his leg. It had begun to plague him mightily, for he had been pushing it too hard. ‘And do not think of getting too close to it. When my own parish church of St Mary’s caught, the lead near took my scalp in its melting.’ He touched the oozing burn on the top of his head, then peered to the corner where the churchyard joined the end of Cheapside and what had been Paternoster Row. Bizarrely, one house still stood there, curtains in its windows, no less.

  ‘Who are these?’ Coke said, pointing. Men were marching around the corner, soldiers in the main. Following behind them was King Charles II.

  ‘Come, Captain,’ said Pitman, setting out. ‘It’s time you kept your promise to your king.’

  ‘I’d rather sleep,’ said Coke, following him and pulling Dickon up, who was transfixed by the burning cathedral. ‘Still, if there’s any man who has the power to fight this fire, it is probably he.’

  They were halfway to the king when the explosions came: the first above and behind them, the second an instant later. There’d been explosions all day, with men using barrels of gunpowder to hasten the destruction of houses by blowing them up. This was not like that. This was a gunshot and first it had the pair ducking, then running, to the crowd ahead and the men mounted within it.

  Simeon gave the commands, as he had when he’d been sergeant to the regiment.

  ‘Cock,’ he said, though he did not roar it as he had on battlefields. ‘Aim.’

  The window frame exploded inwards. They cried out, all except Hopkinson, now unable to, lead ball having taken away his face. He was flung back, his own gun firing as he fell, his bullet going high as if he aimed at the roof of flaming St Paul’s. Simeon and Tremlett were too shocked to shoot, and immediately blinded by gunsmoke. Daniel, holding the back door open for a speedy retreat, screamed, ‘Hurry!’ Both men dropped their muskets and ran out past him.

  ‘Where?’ yelled Tremlett.

  Simeon did not answer, only ran. He had seen what they’d done to Colonel Rathbone and other martyrs at Tyburn tree. He would outpace that if he could. Yet even as they reached Amen Corner, and felt the heat on their faces from Newgate prison still aflame, he turned and saw that they were pursued. A large man came in a strange, quick lurch, another tall man beside him.

  ‘Pitman and Coke – the devils!’ he hissed. ‘Faster.’

  —

  ‘They make for the bridge!’

  The paths along the Fleet Ditch were always a jumble – of ropes for the tied-up wherries and skiffs; of barrels, broken crates, spars; and of lean-to shelters for those who could not even afford tuppence for a floor in the liberties nearby. Yet it was clearer now than at any time Pitman had passed along it, for, like all the detritus-strewn streets of the city, it had been purged by fire. Soot rose in clouds as they ran, their faces turned away from the Fleet prison as they passed it, still raging in flame.

  By the time they cleared its end, Coke was about thirty paces in front, Dickon slightly ahead of him, both able to leap the charred timbers and smoking coils Pitman’s leg forced him to step over. They were gaining on the three ahead, who were slowing because of the great press at the bridge – a crowd of humanity, wailing and shoving in their attempts to cross, driven by terror and by the great heat, coming from all around but especially from the cathedral fully aflame now on the hill above them.

  As the three fugitives drew near, there came a huge explosion. Pitman, at the end of the prison yard, looked up in time to see fireballs bursting from St Paul’s. One came hurtling down to pass just above his head and smash into a wherry tied up in the ditch, turning it instantly to flaming kindling. He saw what had caused it, as the boat sank spluttering into the filthy waters, but could scarcely believe it – it was a chunk of building stone, he could even see a mason’s mark on its edge. God’s house had been transformed into missiles.

  Screams from the crowd now scattering before him showed that it had become something else too – a river of lead. ‘Jesus save us,’ screamed one woman, lifting her skirts above the flood as it were a puddle she wished to cross, screaming more as the molten metal encased her feet. A man snatched her up, shouting in agony in his turn. People broke every way, fleeing the heated stone falling from the sky, the shifting, scalding ground. Flight opened a passage to the bridge where there had been none before, and those they pursued took it, shoving aside any who paused to look back.

  Both Coke and Dickon had been slowed by the mob’s scattering. Pitman caught up with them and, forcing themselves to enter the glistening metallic pool, they ran with soles burning, leather dissolving, toes crisping, to the bridge, then across it.

  Their enemies were still in sight for many of the houses that would have hidden them were smoking ruins now. Certain buildings nearby still stood because of their stone walls – St Bride’s church and the huge Bridewell, once a palace, now a prison. Both contained the flames that consumed them from the inside, hot as a smith’s furnace. No man could stand near one for long – unless he had to.

  Its intensity made them draw up for a moment, their hands raised in feeble effort against the glare and the heat. ‘Where do they make for?’ shouted Coke, above the roar that had filled London for days.

  Pitman peered, coughing through the swirling smoke, and saw those they pursued again. ‘There!’

  Coke and Dickon looked. There was one row of buildings still standing. Somehow the shelter given by the twin fortresses of church and prison, some vagary of wind and flame, had preserved them – though it could not be for much longer. As they looked on roofs were catching fire, one by one. Even so, the three ahead vanished between the smoking houses.

  ‘Shall we leave them to God, Captain?’

  Coke looked up at the bigger man, then down at Dickon. He did not see how any could survive the maelstrom closing in; while the heat that held him, from the soles of his scalded feet to the crown of his crisped head, made him want nothing more than to flee. But a memory came, a recent one – his first sight of Sarah, waiting to die in a burning crypt, having given up her baby – their baby! The men ahead had put her there. It was not something he could leave to anyone else. Not even to God.

  He drew one pistol. ‘Nay, I will see this through. You go back, if you will. One of us should. Bettina…’

  ‘…would never let me hear the end of it if
I abandoned you here.’ Pitman looked to the pistol. ‘Haven’t a spare one of those, have ye?’

  Coke passed one across, pulled the second from beneath his cloak and drew his sword. Dickon looked at the pair of them, then reached into his boot cuff and pulled out a dagger. ‘C’mon then, Cap’n,’ he cried, ‘into the f-fire again.’

  Side by side the three of them entered the lane.

  The roar diminished only a jot, the heat too, but in contrast to what they’d come from it was like stepping from midsummer heat into a monastery’s cool cloister. They each took the first unscorched breath for an age, felt the relief…

  Then, in a moment, it was gone with the flash of a gun pan, an explosion of powder which sent a ball so close between the two men that both lurched sideways. Coke kept moving, taking Dickon with him into the shelter of a doorway, Pitman going the opposite way into another. The lane was narrow, the houses’ eaves near joined above into a running arch. ‘I think we’ve found the rat’s nest,’ Pitman shouted. ‘Do we let the fire smoke ’em out?’

  ‘And us too?’ The respite afforded by the cobbled lane had been brief indeed. Coke could feel the hot wind rising, as the flames neared. ‘I’ve fought in streets before. One should draw their shot –’

  He’d no sooner said it than it was acted upon. ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’ Dickon shouted, giving the fire-fighters’ cry, launching himself from the doorway, rolling onto the cobbles like a tumbler, leaping to his feet, all within the two heartbeats it took Coke to scream his name.

  In the time before the three shots came.

  The boy straightened up. He did not move for a moment that seemed endless, staring to where the smoke rose from windows, the two men up already and moving towards him.

  ‘Dickon!’ Coke yelled again, his voice cracking.

  The boy looked up at him as he closed in. ‘Missed me, Cap’n,’ he grinned, ‘just like them Hogens.’