Instead I sat in my father’s chamber and went through his meagre possessions again. I don’t know why I did it, unless it was part of saying farewell to him. But part of him lingered in my mind, refusing to depart.
Later, after Margaret had made me eat something, I wandered along to Fleet Street and into Clifford’s Inn. The Fire Court was in session. I stood in the body of the hall while three judges on the low dais heard a petition brought by a merchant who could not afford the rent on his destroyed house; a lawyer, defending the freeholder, the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s, methodically tied the poor man in knots. Mr Chelling was not there.
By the evening I felt more vigorous, and the internal fog that had filled my mind all day had dissipated. I set out for the Lamb. On a whim, I did not walk into Wych Street but passed under Temple Bar to the mouth of Fetter Lane. The fragmentary letter I had found yesterday in Chelling’s cupboard was in my mind.
In Fetter Lane, by the Hal—
Fetter Lane ran north from Fleet Street towards Holborn and marked the western boundary of the Fire. To the east lay the ruins, with the blackened church towers where choirs no longer sang and prayers were no longer said. To the west, the buildings were largely undamaged, though here and there the flames had leapt across the road and devoured what they could before the wind had changed and driven them away.
The sun was out, but the shadows were lengthening. I walked slowly northwards, keeping to the western side. To the left was the square tower of St Dunstan-in-the-West and the roofs of Clifford’s Inn. The Fire had reached a section of the buildings on this side, including part of the Inn. By this stage, however, its fury had been abating. Some of the damaged buildings had been made habitable after a fashion.
A beggar pursued me for a few yards until I shouted at him and waved my stick. The man fell back, grumbling. For all that, and against my better judgement, I felt a twinge of pity. I had known hunger myself, and the beggar was about my own age; the man had had the misfortune to lose an arm.
I came to the mouth of the lane leading from the east into Clifford’s Inn. The gate was open. Black-clad figures moved in the court beyond, walking slowly as if in a dream world. To the right was the boarded-up ruin and the improbably green foliage of the trees in the garden. The tree trunks were dark with soot, like most of London’s trees, but the spring leaves glinted where they caught the sunshine.
Time was passing. If I wasn’t careful, I would be late. I walked on, drawing level with the long roofline of the brick building in Clifford’s Inn. It rode like the side of a tall ship over the humbler buildings between it and Fetter Lane. These belonged to a rambling house set back from the road, its frontage damaged by the Fire, with a yard and outbuildings behind it. The house was still inhabited, and a post stood before the door, signifying that there was hospitality within. A sign hung from the jettied first floor, but it was so blackened by the heat that there was nothing to be made out on it.
Somewhere a church clock began to toll the hour. One, two, three … I was late already.
The beggar drew level again. ‘For the love of God, your worship—’
I swung round to face him. The man cowered and raised his one arm to cover his face.
Four, five, six …
‘You there,’ I said. ‘What’s the name of that house?’
Seven. Damnation.
The beggar blinked, taken off guard. ‘The Half Moon, master.’
‘A tavern?’
‘Yes. Good enough food, sir, if you can pay for it. For the love of God, sir …’
I felt in my pocket for a sixpence. It was a ridiculously generous amount for the service rendered. I dropped the coin into the man’s palm and walked quickly away, ignoring two more beggars who were now moving towards us like wasps to a honeycomb. The one-armed man stayed put, calling down unwanted blessings on my head. I felt the familiar guilt: there, but for the grace of God, go I.
I turned into Fleet Street and set off in the direction of the Strand. The beggars dropped away, and with them went my guilt.
In Fetter Lane, by the Hal—
So did Chelling’s unfinished letter refer to the Half Moon? Was the tavern connected to its promise of ‘distressing information’?
Dear God, what murky business had my poor father strayed into?
After all that, I needn’t have hurried.
‘Mr Hakesby?’ the landlord said. ‘He’s not here yet. Will you be wanting a private room, sir?’
‘Yes. But I’ll wait for him.’
I went back downstairs and stood in the doorway. The street was full of people – mostly men, mostly lawyers, who swaggered about the neighbourhood as if they owned it; which in a way they did.
Five minutes later, I caught sight of Hakesby and Cat approaching: the tall, thin man and small woman with the delicate features. They made an unlikely couple. Hakesby was slow and halting in his movements. Beside him, Cat was unnaturally stiff, as if fighting to contain the vitality that spilled out of her. I hardly knew her but in my mind she was always in motion, darting like a flame from one thing to another, her outline constantly shifting. Not like a woman at all. A sprite, perhaps, some creature from another world where they managed things differently.
The road was narrow, and it lacked the posts along the sides that gave some protection to the pedestrians in wider thoroughfares. Hakesby and Cat were forced to step into the roadway by a couple of law students, who were walking rapidly by in the opposite direction, and arguing as they went.
One of them jostled Cat, perhaps intentionally. He paused, turned and leered down at her. She spat at him, not at the ground. His face contorted with anger.
Swearing under my breath, I left the shelter of the doorway and ran towards them. Why did the little fool have to be so indiscreet? I had no stomach for a street brawl.
But I wasn’t needed. The man wheeled suddenly away and set off down the street. I reached Cat just in time to see the dying sunlight glint on a blade. The knife vanished under her cloak.
‘You mustn’t do that again,’ Hakesby said to her, his voice trembling. ‘You’re too rash. It will be the death of us all one day. What if that man lays information against you? What were you thinking of?’
She did not reply. Nor did she curtsy. If she had been a real cat, she probably would have spat at me.
‘I’ve ordered a room,’ I said.
‘We were delayed,’ Hakesby said. ‘But we have news.’
At the Lamb, we were shown to our private room. As soon as we were alone, I took out the leather pouch, secured with a drawstring. It chinked when I set it on the table, and the invisible contents shifted as if they were alive.
Hakesby sighed.
‘Twenty pounds,’ I said. ‘Some gold, but mainly silver.’
‘You will have it back within eight weeks,’ Cat said.
‘Jane!’ Hakesby put his hand on her arm. ‘You cannot say such things. It’s not your place. Besides, you can’t know whether we will be in a position to repay Mr Marwood so soon. Though of course I hope we will. What’s your rate of interest?’
‘I’m not charging interest. Just pay me back the principal.’ I hesitated, reckoning up my more pressing debts and setting the total against my likely income in the next few months. ‘Eight weeks would be most convenient.’
In that moment I was struck by an overwhelming sense of my own folly. I hardly knew these people. The service they were doing me was trifling. Yet I was lending them, without security, all the portable wealth I possessed. What in God’s name was I doing? It was as if my father’s death had removed something vital from me, something that had hitherto prevented me from acting like a credulous fool. Without it, I was as helpless as a child.
‘I’m grateful for your kindness, sir.’ Hakesby compressed his lips. ‘And I wish the loan weren’t necessary in the first place.’
‘He doesn’t do this for nothing, sir,’ Cat said, flaring up. ‘No doubt he has his reasons.’
I wanted to snap
at her. Instead I said, ‘You’ve heard from Chelling?’ I didn’t mention that I had seen him yesterday.
‘Yes,’ Cat said, even as Hakesby was opening his mouth to reply. ‘There’s a Fire Court case next week that will come before those three judges.’
‘It concerns Dragon Yard,’ Hakesby said. ‘I assume that is your DY. Strange, isn’t it?’ He cocked his head. The waiter’s step was on the stairs. ‘One way or another, everything comes back to the Fire Court.’
When I returned to Infirmary Close, Sam met me at the door of my house. Margaret hovered behind her husband. Neither met my eye.
‘What’s this?’ I said. ‘A committee?’
The furniture and the panelling had been freshly polished. I sniffed. A smell of cooking was wafting up from the kitchen. My mouth watered. I had eaten nothing at the Lamb. I realized that for the first time in days I felt hungry.
Sam, who was wearing a clean collar, drew himself up and rapped the tip of his crutch on the floor. ‘I hope I see your worship in good health.’
‘Why so formal? Yes, I’m perfectly well.’
‘There’s a letter for you, sir.’ Sam cleared his throat. ‘I chanced to notice it bears the seal of Mr Williamson’s office.’
‘Give it to me, then.’
Irritated, I took the letter and turned aside to open it. It contained nothing more than a line scribbled by a clerk.
Mr Williamson expects yr attendance by 8 tomorrow.
I crumpled the paper and stuffed it in my pocket. By his lights, Williamson had treated me indulgently in excusing me from attendance at the office since Saturday. It wasn’t as if I could plead that settling my father’s estate required time, because there was nothing of consequence to be settled.
It was infuriating. The strange business of the Fire Court and Clifford’s Inn filled my mind so much that there was little room for anything else, let alone for the routines of gathering information for Williamson’s private ear and disseminating selections of it, suitably presented for the public, in the London Gazette. Whatever I felt about my father’s death, however, I could hardly risk my employment, my main source of income – especially now, when I had given almost all the ready money I possessed to Mr Hakesby.
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ Sam said, implausibly obsequious, ‘might I ask the honour of a word?’
‘What the devil are you about, jackanapes?’ I snapped, my irritation striking the nearest target like a bolt of lightning. ‘Why are you talking like a gallant in a bad play?’
‘It’s this, sir,’ Sam said, reverting to his normal voice, with an answering edge of irritation in his own. ‘The wife and me are worried. And it’s not right, you leaving us like this. Not knowing our arse from our elbow.’
‘Sam!’ Margaret whispered, her face filling with anguish.
‘When you hired us,’ Sam went on, scowling at me, ‘it was because of your father needing us, Margaret especially. And that’s why you took this house, so there’d be room for him and us all. You told me so yourself. So what’s going to happen now, master? He’s dead. He doesn’t need us any more. Nor do you, for that matter, nor a house this size. For all we know, you’re going to give up the lease come midsummer.’
I hadn’t even thought about such things. But he was right. I no longer needed a house the size of Infirmary Close or two servants.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,’ I said. ‘Damn your insolence,’ I added, though without as much conviction as I should have done.
‘We need to know if you’re going to turn us out into the street, sir,’ Sam said. ‘That’s all.’
Margaret sniffed. Her fingers plucked at her apron.
I understood now the reason for the gleaming woodwork and the smell of cooking, and for the care and patience that Sam and Margaret had lavished on my father, saving me from the burden of doing it myself. I also understood that by giving them employment and taking them into my family, I had somehow acquired an obligation as well as conferred one. I owed them a debt. Just as I owed my father a debt for not believing him on the last evening of his life.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ I repeated, in a gentler voice. ‘But – even if I move from the Savoy – I will not see you left without a roof over your head if I can help it.’
Margaret curtsied and said, as if this were an evening like any other, ‘And when will you be wanting your supper, sir?’
‘Later,’ I said, coming suddenly to a decision. While I had loyal servants, I might as well make use of them. ‘Sam, we’re going out in a moment. Attend me.’
He followed me into the parlour and stood looking at me with his bright eyes. I heard Margaret retreating to the kitchen.
‘Come armed,’ I said softly, so Margaret wouldn’t hear.
The light was ebbing from the sky, and the smoke from a thousand chimneys made a grey pall over London. I didn’t need to adapt my pace to Sam’s – he was extraordinarily agile, and with his stump and crutch he negotiated the streets as rapidly as most men did on two undamaged legs.
We walked along the Strand and passed under the Bar into Fleet Street.
Sam drew level with me. ‘Clifford’s Inn, sir?’
‘Not exactly. Though it may have a bearing.’
I glanced at him. His face was alight with excitement. God’s blood, I thought, he’s enjoying this. When I had first met him, he had been surviving on his wits in Alsatia, the sanctuary in Whitefriars where thieves and debtors lived unmolested by the law. Sometimes I wondered if he was wearied by the respectability of his life at Infirmary Close.
We were on the north side of the street. As we drew level with St Dunstan-in-the-West, I threw a glance up the alley leading to the Inn. The gate was open. Beyond it was the stunted south court and the door of the hall. It seemed to me that there was something secretive about Clifford’s Inn, about its untidy, close-packed huddle of buildings: it set itself apart from the world, drawing in its skirts like a prudish lady from the common crowds of Fleet Street.
We walked on and turned into Fetter Lane. Beggars have long memories, and two or three of them swarmed about us. Sam was ruthless and drove them away with his crutch and his sailor’s vocabulary.
I paused outside the Half Moon. At the southern end of the building, towards Fleet Street, an alley little more than a yard wide wriggled between the gable wall of the inn and the side of the neighbouring building.
Sam glanced up at the sign over the door. His face brightened. ‘You’ll take a glass of wine, master?’
I lowered my voice. ‘I’ve a fancy to see the back of the house. There must be a yard, outhouses perhaps. See that ruined building behind? And that long roof on the right? That’s part of Clifford’s Inn.’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Are we going up that alley?’
‘You aren’t. Stay here. If anyone asks what I’m up to, tell them I have a powerful need to shit. Try and keep them away.’
I left him there, leaning against the wall and picking his teeth. The unpaved alley wound between the buildings on either side. Judging from the smell of it, many people had already used it as a makeshift necessary house. By this time the light was fading, and I had to watch my step.
The buildings gave way to the walls of the Half Moon’s yard, which were topped with spikes. The alley seemed to be going towards the back of the new building, where Gromwell’s chambers were. Then it swung abruptly to the left. After a few yards the path ended at a heavy door banded with iron, set in an archway of blackened stone. There was an extensive collection of turds of various ages on and around the doorstep. But the refuse had recently been scraped away from the centre, leaving a clear path up the alley and on to the step.
I looked up. The door was an entrance to the ruined staircase at Clifford’s Inn, the one that had aroused Chelling’s passions. He had pointed it out when we first met. There was no sign of a latch or a keyhole. The threshold was worn to a deep curve, as if someone had taken a neat bite from it. I laid the palm
of my hand on the door and pushed. It didn’t move. That was when I heard the footsteps behind me.
Someone was coming up the alley. I heard men’s voices, two of them. They appeared around the corner. One was a workman, wearing a stained leather apron over his breeches. The other was a tall, slim man in a dark cloak and a broad-brimmed hat. He was carrying a staff shod with iron.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said. He sounded as if he had his mouth full.
I pointed at one of the fresher piles of turds. ‘What does it look like?’
The hat shielded much of his face, and in the poor light the rest of his features were a blur.
‘It’s private here.’ The hard consonants were indistinct, but not his meaning.
There were more footsteps in the alley, and I recognized their halting rhythm.
The tall man turned towards the corner, just as Sam appeared. ‘You’re trespassing. Both of you. Get out.’
Sam stopped, his hand flicking back the edge of his cloak. I knew he had a pistol in his belt on that side. There was a dagger on the other.
‘As you please,’ I said, as pleasantly as I could.
‘And don’t come back.’ The tall man pointed his staff at Sam. ‘Nor you, cripple.’
Because of the narrowness of the alley, he and the workman had to stand with their backs to the wall to let me pass. His head was bowed, the brim covering the upper part of the face. As I squeezed by, I glimpsed a small, compressed mouth overshadowed by the chin below and the nose above. That explained the articulation: he had lost all or most of his teeth.
As part of my mourning, there were black silk weepers attached to my hat, and they touched his shoulder as I passed. He brushed them away as if they were cobwebs.
I walked on, frowning at Sam to keep him from intervening. One of the men followed, at a distance. He wanted to make sure we had really gone.
We reached the street. A large handcart was waiting near the end of the alley, with a small boy guarding it.
‘Who’s old sourface then?’ Sam said. ‘I don’t think he likes us.’
The Fire Court Page 10