‘The Vintry,’ replied Chloë, equally terse and eager to be off.
He shook his head and released her. ‘Oh no you’re not.’
She stared back in annoyance.
‘I am. The silks and velvets are still in the warehouse and I’m going to move them.’
‘Unnecessary. Matt set out half an hour ago.’
‘Oh.’ For a second, she felt faintly nonplussed, then she said stubbornly, ‘Well, I’m going anyway. It isn’t fair to leave it all to Matt – and that cloth represents five months planning and work. It’s worth nearly fifteen hundred pounds.’
‘I don’t care if it’s worth fifteen thousand,’ replied Mr Deveril inflexibly. ‘You’re going to do as you’re told and stay meekly by the hearth.’
Chloë’s brows rose to impossible heights.
‘And what,’ she asked politely, ‘are you going to do?’
A gleam of humour lit the silver-blue eyes.
‘Play with a fire-engine,’ he replied, heading for the stairs.
‘I might have known,’ said Chloë gloomily following. Then, ‘How bad is it?’
‘It’s critical,’ said Alex over his shoulder. He reached the door and turned to face her with a sudden smile. ‘Which is why you’re staying at home like a good girl. D’accord?’
She smiled meekly in reply and watched him stride to the gate. Then, as soon as he was out of sight, she shut the door behind her and wasted five minutes walking round the garden before setting off for the blazing north bank.
By the time she had fought her way to the middle of the bridge, she was beginning to realise that her magisterial ex-husband probably had a point. The narrow, shop-lined road was choked with laden carts and, between these, the poorer people jostled their way south, their arms full of whatever possessions they had managed to save. Bruised and battered, Chloë ploughed doggedly on to the far side and it was only then that she felt her resolve weaken.
The fire had reached the church of St Magnus and was sweeping down towards the river with horrifying speed while the air, acrid with smoke, was charged with a deluge of sparks and fragments of burning material. It was a matter of minutes before the bridge itself would be ablaze – and the knowledge drove Chloë on. Tearing the scarf from her hair to hold it over her mouth, she darted an erratic course through the press of noisily frightened refugees and dived headlong down the side of the Fishmongers Hall towards the Old Swan. She raced through the Steelyard without attracting a second glance, all the men there busy tipping combustible loads of wood, coal and tar into the river; and at length, her chest heaving, she reached the Vintry and Matt.
Mr Lewis stared at her crossly. ‘Didn’t Mr Alex tell you to stay at home?’
‘Yes,’ panted Chloë. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to get a boat. I’ve paid a couple of lads to move the stuff but as yet we’ve no transport. You can’t do anything so you might as well go back. Unless you fancy the rough side of Mr Alex’s tongue?’
‘I’m staying,’ she said obstinately. ‘And Mr Alex won’t know anything about it unless you tell him.’ She surveyed the chaotic waterfront where a spotty youth in a small boat was desperately trying to find a space to tie his craft. ‘This couldn’t be one of yours, could it?’
Matt looked and gave a grunt of satisfaction before marching into the warehouse where his other assistant stood waiting. ‘Jump to it, lad – we’ll start with the velvets.’ He turned to Chloë. ‘If you’re set on helping, go across with Tom. You’ll have to find somebody to carry the cloth to the house and they’ll need watching if you don’t want to be robbed.’
Chloë went to pick up a bolt of crimson velvet and had it taken unceremoniously from her hands. ‘Leave it. Wait by the boat – you’re only in the way here. And I doubt we’ve more than an hour.’
Having, as he thought, despatched Chloë safely back to Southwark, Matthew was considerably irritated when she returned with the boat and announced that she’d left the business of supervision in the capable hands of Mistress Jackson.
‘The bridge is on fire and people are throwing things out of their windows into the river,’ she said, following as he carried more velvet to the boat. ‘And the Fishmongers Hall and the Old Swan are ablaze. It’s moving quite fast, isn’t it?’
Mr Lewis’ reply was to accelerate his efforts but, even so, by the time they were ready to set off again, the air was thick with smoke and nauseous fumes from a warehouse of resin and pitch in the Steelyard.
Matt ordered Chloë to go home and stay there; Chloë, despite streaming eyes and intermittent bouts of coughing, refused. There followed a brief but pungent exchange at the end of which Tom rowed off alone and Mr Lewis took the liberty of informing Mistress Chloë that she was a damned stubborn nuisance.
Chloë spent the next twenty minutes in a mounting fever of anxiety. From the edge of the wharf she was able to see the fire engulf All Hallows the Great and pass on to All Hallows the Less; a warehouse of wine and brandy sent huge flames soaring high into the air and the wind was carrying burning debris closer and closer to where she stood. Then the roof of the building next door but one caught light and Chloë was flooded with a sense of bitter frustration. She thought of all the things that this cargo was to have bought – fresh hangings for Mr Deveril’s bed-chamber, new rugs for the parlour – and her eyes filled with tears that had nothing to do with the choking air.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’ a furious voice demanded.
Chloë jumped and swung round to meet a wrathful stare.
‘I thought I’d made it clear that you were not to come?’
‘Yes. Well. You did,’ replied Chloë weakly. ‘Only I thought – ‘
‘What you thought is perfectly plain,’ snapped Mr Deveril, ‘and you’re a little fool. Where the devil is Matt?’
‘Inside.’ She swallowed and her gaze dropped from the frowning, sweat-streaked face to the ruin of yet another coat. ‘He tried to send me home.’
‘Well, I’ll do more than try and I don’t have time to argue. I have to demolish your warehouse – and quickly, if it’s to be any use. You may go voluntarily or the other way – but go you will. And this time you won’t come back. Do you hear me?’
An ache filled Chloë’s chest and she gazed desperately across the waterfront. ‘You can’t pull it down. More than half the cloth is still inside. Can’t you - -?’
‘No I can’t.’ Seizing her shoulders, Alex spun her to face the fire. ‘Look at it. We’ve ten minutes – possibly less. Do you want to sacrifice the City to a few ells of silk?’
The roof that had caught a few minutes ago was now angrily ablaze and the fire was roaring and crackling its way to the next one.
‘No. I’m sorry.’ A sob tore at her throat. ‘You’re right, of course.’
Mr Deveril pulled her back to face him and his smoke-reddened eyes examined her narrowly. ‘Oh God! All right – wait here. I’ll see what I can do.’ And he raced into the warehouse.
Five minutes later when Tom brought the boat back, Alex and Matt had a mound of silk waiting on the quay while the demolition crew started work with axes at the rear. Within seconds, Mr Deveril had hurled the cloth into the boat and turned to grasp Chloë’s hand; then, very swiftly, he pulled her into his arms and dropped a light kiss on her hair. ‘I’m sorry, Marigold – but the King wants us to hold it at the Three Cranes. Try to understand – and don’t cry. It doesn’t matter.’ And before she could reply, he handed her into the waiting boat.
Chloë sniffed and stared wetly up at him as Tom pushed off from the bank.
‘You’re tired,’ she said.
‘A bit.’ Alex smiled at her. ‘I’ll come when I can. Don’t worry.’ Then he strode back to his work.
They moved fast, bringing the loosely-jointed wooden structure down before the flames touched it – but to no avail. Although they were able to remove the debris by flinging it into the river, the fire continued to fasten hungrily on the next building; A
lex swore with rare fluency, tossed a stream of orders to Mr Lewis, now ably assisting, and raced, coughing, through the smoke in the direction of Thames Street.
The conflagration had already spread this far and was burning patchily north towards Canning Street whose inhabitants were busily loading their goods into a myriad of vehicles which almost totally blocked the road. Alex sped through a gap and cannoned into Mr Pepys of the Naval Office.
‘Have you seen Bludworth?’ demanded Mr Deveril, pitching his voice over the din.
Mr Pepys shook his head and then, suddenly pointing to the far side of the road, ‘Over there!’
Alex shot off, forging a path, with the Naval official hard on his heels.
If the Lord Mayor had seen their approach he might well have striven to escape, for he had a great dislike for forceful young gentlemen of Mr Deveril’s stamp; but, as it was, the first he knew was when his arm was seized in an iron grip.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ Alex shouted. ‘It’s too damned slow. What fresh orders have you given?’
Sir Thomas quivered with indignation.
‘Lord – what more can I do? I’m spent and the people won’t obey me. I have been pulling down houses – but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.’
‘I know that!’ snapped Alex. ‘Pulling them down isn’t enough – we need to use gunpowder.’
‘What? The people would never tolerate it.’
‘His Majesty,’ said Mr Pepys primly, ‘has commanded that demolition should proceed with all possible expedition – to which end, the Duke of York offers soldiers if you should need them.’
Sir Thomas mopped his brow with a large handkerchief and said peevishly, ‘Well I don’t! We are doing everything that can be done and I have been up all night.’
He tried to move away but was detained by Mr Deveril’s hand on his arm.
‘Have you called out the Militia?’ he demanded. And then, ‘Obviously not. So you’d best do it before you go off to put your feet up.’ And finally, with an explosion he could not control, ‘You bloody fool! How long to you expect to fight this thing with volunteers? For Christ’s sake, use what little sense you have and call out the troops!’ And leaving the Mayor goggling apoplectically and Mr Pepys staring with faintly scandalised satisfaction, Alex shot back towards the wharves.
Within the hour the City Militia took over demolition work at the riverside, one detachment going to stop the blaze at Botolph’s Wharf and another relieving Mr Deveril’s crew west of Dowgate. The river, by this time, was speckled with barrels, boxes and items of furniture that had been cast into it and were floating up with the tide to bob gently amongst the profusion of loaded barges and lighters. The bridge was burning fast and its terrified occupants descended the pier stairways to boats tied below in which they embarked with everything they could carry. Like their human neighbours, the pigeons were also loth to leave and flew round and round until, their feathers scorched by the fire, they dropped into the water.
Water had become Mr Deveril’s most immediate difficulty. Having left Dowgate, he and Matt took their men northwards into the City only to discover that the pumping mechanism at London Bridge had stopped working as soon as the flames attacked it and that all the pipes and sluices had been cut by panicky fire-fighters to fill their buckets. Consequently, though he now had access to the cumbersome ‘suck-and-squirt’ fire-engines, the sole water supply was a quarter of a mile away and the process of obtaining it made even slower than necessary by the press of carts, refugees and gleeful plunderers thronging the streets.
As the afternoon passed, the fire seemed to spread even faster. Two by two, Mr Deveril sent his little force off to rest while he himself worked on. Darkness fell and the night sky glowed red from the immense blaze as Matthew went with unwilling fury to Southwark; and still Alex stayed, his brain clogged with fatigue and his body responding with mechanical slowness. Only when Matt returned shortly before four in the morning did he finally yield to the inevitable and leave for home himself.
Fully dressed and dozing fitfully in the parlour, Chloë was jerked awake by the sound of the front door closing and, running into the hall, she found Alex – filthy, dishevelled and swaying with exhaustion. Summing up the situation at a glance, she flew to his side and, rapidly revising her plans, flung a series of orders at Naomi whilst guiding Alex firmly towards the stairs. He tried to say something but was overtaken by a fit of coughing. Chloë’s grip on him tightened.
‘Don’t talk,’ she said. ‘You’ll be better when you’ve slept.’
She pushed open the door of his room and made him sit on the bed while she pulled off his boots – which, like the rest of his clothing, looked beyond repair. Then she untied the laces of his charred and blackened shirt, wondering stupidly what had become of his coat.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Alex in a hoarse whisper, ‘that I’m going to make a terrible mess of your sheets.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You can bathe later. Lift your arms so I can take your shirt – ah, good. Thank you, Naomi.’ This as the maid entered to place a mug beside the bed. Chloë handed her the ruined shirt. ‘This can be thrown away. But can you see what – if anything – can be done with Mr Deveril’s boots?’
Naomi curtsied, picked up the boots with a dubious air and withdrew.
Chloë put the mug in Alex’s hand and closed his fingers round it.
‘Drink this,’ she said, frowning at the numerous small burn-marks that adorned his torso. ‘It’s warm milk and honey to ease your throat.’
Alex did as she asked and gave back the mug with a hazy smile.
‘I’ve been talking too much.’
‘You still are.’ She watched him lie down and cast a light woollen coverlet over him before crossing the room the close the curtains.
‘Chloë?’ His voice was a mere thread.
She moved back to the bedside. ‘Yes?’
‘Don’t let me sleep more than four hours. Promise?’
If she hesitated, it was only for a second. ‘I promise,’ she said. And left him.
When she went back shortly after nine he was still sound asleep – which, after forty-eight hours of continued and strenuous activity, was hardly surprising. Chloë set down her tray, watching him; his face was turned into the pillow and he lay with one arm outstretched, its fingers lax and curved inwards towards the blistered palm. A great wave of emotion welled up inside her, so intense that it robbed her of every thought but one and, sitting lightly at his side, she enclosed the beautiful, desecrated hand in hers for a long moment before raising it to her lips. Then, laying it gently down again, she drew a long, unsteady breath and set about rousing him.
As she had expected, Alex was too tired to wake easily but eventually he rolled over and propped himself on his elbows, his face driven into his hands. Chloë left him rigidly alone while she opened the curtains and poured warm, honey-spiced mead, then she sat down again on the edge of the bed and put the cup in his hand.
‘Naomi will be up in a minute with hot water and there’s some salve for the worst of your burns on the wash-stand,’ she said, as if it were perfectly normal to sit on his bed while the City was in flames. ‘I’ve laid fresh clothes on the chair and we’ve done the best we could with your boots. Is there anything else I can do for you?’
Mr Deveril set down the cup and sat up with a smile that was plainly an effort.
‘No. Thank you. Can - - ?’ He stopped and Chloë set her teeth and waited. ‘I’d like to talk to you. Later, when I’m thoroughly awake. Will you be here?’
She got up and smiled back with flawless, if superficial, composure.
‘I’ll be here,’ she promised, walking to the door. ‘Indeed, I’ve no intention of going anywhere – or of letting you go anywhere – until you’ve had a proper meal.’
When Alex joined her in the dining-parlour half an hour later, he was largely restored and able to do justice to a plate of chops whilst rendering an astringent account of the situati
on across the river. Chloë made a pretence of eating an apple she didn’t want, her eyes never leaving his face.
‘… and add to that the fact that, in most cases, the buckets, ladders and axes stored in the churches are either rotten with age or have been pilfered,’ he said, ‘and what you have in not only a disaster – but a stupid disaster.’ He laid down his knife and fixed her with a sudden, penetrating gaze. ‘None of this is what I wanted to say to you – but, as usual, this isn’t the time. It seems that I owe you a great many apologies and explanations and thanks – not least for your patience. Is it asking too much for you to bear with me till this is over?’
Chloë flushed a little. ‘No. And you owe me nothing.’
A vagrant smile lit the intent face as he got up and walked towards her.
‘Not even for the warehouse?’
She shook her head. ‘You had no choice.’
‘No, I didn’t. But you mind – and I’m sorry for that.’ For the space of a heartbeat, brown eyes met silver-blue and then he said abruptly, ‘I have to go.’
Chloë stood up and discovered that her knees felt like jelly.
‘Yes. But don’t work so long without rest this time,’ she said, striving for her usual tone. And finding it, ‘Or I’ll be forced to use drastic measures. Again.’
*
Alex picked his way through the smouldering wreckage of what had once been Fish Street Hill towards the so far untouched reaches of Gracious Street and Cornhill. Fenchurch Street was choked with carriages and frightened pedestrians scurrying to deposit their belongings on Tower Hill, while Leadenhall Market swarmed with people haggling noisily over the possession of a cart – the cost of which had risen from ten shillings to twenty pounds.
He came upon Matt just east of St Mary-le-Bow and, without preamble, asked what new measures had been taken in the last few hours. Mr Lewis responded with a grimy, sardonic grin and the information that the Duke of York, now officially in charge, was attempting to quell the panic by riding about with his guard.
‘Wonderful,’ said Alex. ‘And that’s all? No gunpowder? No soldiers?’
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