The Fire Court

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘Send me instead,’ she suggested.

  ‘Think how it would look – sending a maid in my place. Mr Poulton would take it as a slight.’

  ‘He would take it as a worse slight if you sent the boy, who knows nothing about anything. If you send me, at least I know the plans, which is more than Brennan does. I should do. I drew them for you. And I know what’s in your mind too. I could answer at least some of his questions.’

  ‘Very well. It appears I have no choice.’ Hakesby sighed. ‘To think it has come to this. Let us hope he won’t be insulted that I sent you in my place … But you must take the boy with you. You cannot wander the streets alone, particularly among the ruins. And even so …’

  Cat had no wish to take the porter’s boy with her. He had damp hands that left smudges on the letters he brought up to them. Despite his youth, she suspected him of trying to peep at her through the cracks of the necessary house in the yard.

  But the boy’s company was a small price to pay. Before Hakesby could change his mind, she put on her cloak, found her pattens and gathered up the plans into a folder.

  She left the house with the boy, the plans under her arm. The clock struck the three-quarters as they passed St Dunstan-in-the-West by Clifford’s Inn. Cat quickened her pace, and the boy straggled behind her, whining when she urged him to hurry.

  When they reached Cheapside, Poulton was already at Dragon Yard, pacing over the site with a servant who was taking notes at his dictation. A hackney coach was waiting nearby, the driver refreshing himself at the beer stall on the other side of the road, and the horse, its head lowered, standing perfectly motionless apart from his tail, which flicked from side to side in a vain attempt to remove the flies.

  Though he must have seen them approaching on the path that snaked through the rubble, Poulton ignored them until they were almost at his shoulder. He continued to dictate in a low, monotonous voice. The porter’s boy stared open-mouthed at him, as if at a prodigy of nature.

  At last Poulton turned towards them. ‘Well? What’s this? Where’s Mr Hakesby?’

  Cat curtsied. ‘He sends the most profound apologies, sir. He’s unwell.’

  ‘So there’s an end to it.’ Poulton turned away.

  ‘But he has sent me in his stead with the designs, as he promised, and instructed me on the details.’

  Poulton frowned down at her. He held out his hand. Cat gave him the folder. He took out the three sheets of paper and studied them – a sketch of Dragon Yard, marking the access roads and the locations of the houses, the front elevation of one of the terraced houses of three storeys, and plans of the principal floors.

  ‘This is not unlike Limbury’s design,’ Poulton murmured, to himself rather than Cat.

  ‘Mr Hakesby considered the matter and thought there was no reason why you should not follow a similar plan, with the new road to Cheapside. It would enhance the value, as you said yourself, and of course it would also be agreeable to both the Court of Aldermen and the Fire Court.’

  His eyebrows shot up. He stared at her, Cat felt, in much the same way as he would have stared at the hackney coachman’s horse if he had spoken.

  ‘And did he say anything else?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He begs you to consider that his scheme makes possible the building of twelve houses, rather than eight or ten, as Sir Philip intends.’ She came closer and pointed at the plan. ‘By inserting a crossroad there. And that would also make space – there – for a larger house at the south-west corner, which you might wish to reserve for yourself. All this is subject to a full survey, of course, as well as a favourable decision from the Fire Court. But if all goes well, it would increase your profits considerably.’

  ‘You’re Hakesby’s maid, eh?’

  Cat stared back at him. ‘And his cousin, sir.’

  Poulton grunted. ‘Clearly he confides some of his business to you. I hope his work isn’t conducted so eccentrically.’ He paused. ‘And what do you think about it all? You. Not your master.’

  The question took Cat by surprise, and surprise made her answer with more honesty than tact: ‘I think it all depends on the other leaseholders. I have watched other Fire Court petitions, and the judges try to act fairly to everyone. Or, failing that, to the majority of the interested parties.’

  ‘So it will be which of us the others support that will decide the day – Limbury or me?’

  ‘Perhaps. Assuming both of you either have or can borrow the necessary funds and can rebuild in roughly the same time. As Mr Hakesby said the other day, it shouldn’t prove difficult to raise a loan if you need to.’

  ‘Remarkable,’ Poulton said, looking at her. ‘Quite extraordinary.’ His expression was grave but he did not speak unkindly. ‘Tell Mr Hakesby that I have had a word with Dr Hooke as to his suitability for employment in a work of this nature. He was most complimentary, and Dr Hooke is usually sparing of his compliments.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And tell him—’ He broke off, frowning. ‘No matter. There will be time for that later, if necessary. And one other thing. I should like to prepare a set of full plans as soon as possible. The hearing is next week, on Wednesday, so speed is vital. I’ve an accurate survey of the ground at my house, as well as several copies. It shows Dragon Yard as it was, including the vaults, and the route of an underground stream that runs down to the river. Mr Hakesby will find it useful to have a sight of it before he continues. You had better come back with me now, and I will give you a copy. And I shall write him a note, concerning the fees.’

  Cat curtsied. ‘Will it take long, sir?’

  ‘Half an hour or so. An hour at most. My house is in Clerkenwell.’

  ‘Then I’ll send the boy back, sir. So Mr Hakesby knows where I am.’

  Poulton nodded. He walked away towards the coach, leaving his servant and Cat to trail after him and, last of all, the porter’s boy to follow everyone else.

  There was no conversation on the journey to Clerkenwell. The coach smelled like all hackneys, of sweat, horse manure, tobacco and stale perfume. Both Poulton and his servant were tall men, and the servant was fat as well. Cat felt surrounded by walls of masculine flesh.

  The curtains were up, and she stared at the world as it jolted past. Cheapside was coming to life again – families were camping in shelters in the former cellars of their houses; makeshift stalls lined the street frontages; and there were even more permanent structures, built largely of wood, sprouting along the street in defiance of the new building regulations. You could not destroy a city merely by destroying its buildings.

  Poulton’s house was near the green in Clerkenwell. It occupied the wing of an old mansion. The porter admitted them to a hall that was open to the blackened roof timbers. He was big with news, his eyes bulging with excitement.

  ‘Master,’ he cried, ‘it’s Mistress Celia.’

  For an instant, Poulton’s chilly air of self-sufficiency faltered. ‘Where is she? Is she here?’

  ‘No, master, but – well, there’s a Coroner’s man to see you. In your study.’

  ‘A Coroner’s man?’ Poulton’s eyes widened. Then the self-sufficiency was back. ‘Take this girl to Mistress Lee.’ He glanced briefly at Cat. ‘My housekeeper.’

  He walked away. The servant opened a door for Cat but did not bother to bow to her.

  The room was a parlour, sparsely furnished and hung with faded tapestries illustrating scenes from the Old Testament. An old lady sat in the only chair. Her head was turned away from Cat. She was doing nothing, though a pile of sewing lay on the table beside her. At first Cat thought she was asleep but, as Cat advanced slowly into the room, she turned her head. She was small and plump, with a face marked by time and smallpox.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Cat curtsied. ‘Jane Hakesby, mistress. Mr Poulton brought me here about the Dragon Yard business.’

  ‘He won’t have time for that now.’ Mistress Lee moved her head slightly, enough to catch the light from th
e single window. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  ‘Why?’

  The housekeeper dabbed her cheeks with a handkerchief but didn’t answer.

  The door opened. Mistress Lee rose from her chair and flew to embrace Mr Poulton.

  ‘My dear,’ she said. ‘Remember we don’t know for sure.’

  He was paler than ever, his face thinner, his shoulders more stooping.

  ‘The foolish girl,’ he said in a voice that did not seem wholly under his control. ‘What was she about?’

  ‘No, sir, you must not distress yourself. As I say, we must not jump to conclusions.’

  ‘I cannot understand it. Among the ruins. Why would Celia go there?’

  ‘Which is one reason why they may be mistaken.’

  ‘And her clothes—’

  Something in Mistress Lee’s face stopped him in mid-sentence. A warning frown? A touch on his arm? A flick of the eyes towards the visitor?

  Poulton stiffened, straightening his shoulders. He turned towards Cat, who was standing to one side of him and had been out of his line of sight.

  ‘Ah – yes. I had forgotten … Hakesby’s girl … Of course.’ He swallowed. ‘I can’t attend to you now. Or to the Dragon Yard matter. Later, perhaps … We have had – well, it comes to this: you must go.’

  ‘You can’t turn the girl out, sir.’

  He shook his head. ‘We must go with the – the man. He has a coach waiting.’

  ‘Where do you live, child?’ Mistress Lee said.

  ‘I am commanded to go to my cousin’s drawing office, mistress. In Henrietta Street.’

  ‘In that case we will take you up with us as far as Fetter Lane, and send you on in the coach. You’ll never get a hackney here.’

  ‘But, mistress – I can’t cause you so much trouble. And at such a time—’

  ‘I’m not letting you roam the streets by yourself.’ The housekeeper was a foot shorter than Mr Poulton, but in her way she was as formidable as he was, perhaps more so. ‘Especially now. When it seems there may be a monster roaming abroad.’

  ‘A monster …?’ Cat said.

  ‘I won’t brook any argument.’ Mistress Lee glanced from Cat to Mr Poulton. ‘From anyone.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  On Thursday morning, I was at Whitehall by half-past seven. Under-Secretary Williamson was not there, but he had left word I was to work at the Scotland Yard office, copying out his private newsletter to a score of his correspondents scattered the length and breadth of the three kingdoms. It was tedious work in the extreme, and made my wrist and fingers ache.

  Williamson himself looked in between eight and nine but he said nothing to me. He seemed not to see me. I knew his methods. He intended me to feel his displeasure, to brood on it, to wonder when and how the storm would break on my head. He was an artist in his way.

  He went away to spend the rest of the morning with my Lord Arlington. I was worried. Williamson was careful, calculating and controlled. He did not rage at his clerks or at anyone, to my knowledge. But he demanded obedience and he was capable of nursing a grudge.

  A few months ago, I had been in good odour with him – and indeed with my other master, Mr Chiffinch, the Keeper of the King’s Private Closet and a useful ally at court. The King himself had looked kindly on me. But memories are short at Whitehall, and I did not fool myself into thinking I was invulnerable.

  The summons came an hour or so after dinner, in the middle of the afternoon, at a time when even in the best-regulated office diligence tends to be on the wane. Williamson sent a servant commanding me to attend him by the Holbein Gate.

  I seized my cloak and ran out of the office and into Whitehall. There was no sign of Williamson by the Holbein Gate or anywhere else. He kept me waiting a good twenty minutes before he strolled out of the Great Court. He waved me over to him.

  ‘I’m going to the Chancellor’s. Walk with me through the Park.’

  The Chancellor’s new mansion was in Piccadilly. We walked side by side into St James’s Park. Williamson did not say anything until we were skirting the canal. He stopped suddenly and for the first time looked directly at me.

  ‘Well, Marwood. What have you been up to?’

  I could hardly tell Williamson the truth, not least because I did not know what the truth was. ‘Settling my father’s affairs, sir.’

  ‘Your father was a trouble to us all in life. So now he will be a trouble in death too?’

  ‘My father—’

  ‘You’ve work to do here. What have you been up to? Why didn’t you come into the office? I should have known better than to rely on a man from such cross-grained stock.’ He scowled at me. ‘A rotten tree produces rotten fruit.’

  ‘I was distressed, sir, and I knew not what I was about.’ My voice stumbled along, convincing neither of us. ‘And there were debts to be paid, and so forth, and I quite …’

  Williamson stared at me, wrinkling his nose as if I were a slug or a foul smell.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said quickly, knowing that total abasement was my only hope of salvation, ‘especially after all your kindness to me. It was … grief that prostrated me. I swear I shall mend my ways.’

  His expression did not soften, but the anger left it. Williamson was a man who calculated everything in the most economical manner, even his outbursts of rage. ‘I have a task for you now. Not an agreeable one.’

  I bowed. ‘Anything, master. Whatever you command.’

  ‘A body has been found in the ruins. My lord is concerned that there are disaffected elements abroad.’

  In this context, my lord meant my Lord Arlington, the King’s Secretary of State and Williamson’s superior. The security of the kingdom was in his charge.

  ‘It’s a woman,’ he said. ‘And she was stabbed.’

  ‘A whore?’

  ‘The Coroner thinks she’s probably a widow by the name of Hampney. Perfectly respectable woman. Something of an heiress, in fact.’

  That explained Lord Arlington’s interest in the death. It was one thing for a woman of no account to turn up dead, her body abandoned in the ruins. But it was quite another for a wealthy widow to be found in a similar state. Wealthy widows had friends.

  ‘But he’s not convinced it is her,’ Williamson went on. ‘They say this woman is dressed like a whore, or the next best thing. Why would someone like Mistress Hampney dress like that?’

  ‘Not a beauty,’ the Coroner’s clerk said. ‘Though to be sure it’s hard to tell.’

  I said nothing. I was fighting the urge to vomit.

  ‘She seems to have been well enough made if you like them on the skinny side. Me, I like my birds a little plumper.’

  I turned aside, sickened. The clerk was hardly more than a boy, puffed up by his office and trying too hard to impress.

  The woman had been placed on her side in a shallow grave. She was small and slight. Her body was lying in what had been the cellar of a house. It had originally been covered by a thin layer of rubble and ash. But it could not have lain completely hidden for long.

  ‘See the calf of the leg, sir?’ He was a ferret of a youth with a single eyebrow across his forehead. ‘Looks like fox to me. What do you think?’

  For a moment I lowered the cloth that covered my nostrils and mouth. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘The jaw must have been quite a size. You see badgers sometimes at night, but I don’t think the shape of the bite is right. Wild dog, perhaps? There’s a good few of those out here. All it would need is one animal to get a sniff of her and start scraping away with its paws.’

  ‘How did she die? Can you tell?’

  ‘Stab wound under the left breast,’ he said. ‘Probably hit the heart. Stabbed in the neck, too, in the artery. A lot of blood.’

  ‘She must have been buried in haste. By night?’

  ‘They’d have been seen if they’d brought her here during the day. Now look there, sir.’ His fingers fluttered over the exposed forearm. ‘It’s not dog or fox did those. That�
��s rat, and more than one of them. I’d put a crown on it.’

  Unwillingly I stared down at the body. The horrors attending death have a dreadful allure. Black or very dark brown hair partly masked an unnaturally white cheek. Bled like a calf for veal.

  ‘Someone found her before we did,’ the clerk said. ‘Someone with two legs, not four. See that hand?’

  He pointed. My eyes followed. The woman had lost a finger from her right hand. Bone shone white at the stump.

  ‘Probably a ring.’ The clerk shrugged. ‘Quicker to hack off the whole finger than work it loose, if it was a tight fit. As for the eye, I reckon a bird had that. A crow. They go for eyes, you know. They have a particular taste for them. My uncle keeps sheep, and the crows always go for the lambs’ eyes. Living or dead, it’s all the same to them. It’s a delicacy, you might say.’

  There was no sign of the woman’s shoes. I stared at her feet. One was covered in a pale silk stocking, which had fallen to the ankle. The other was bare.

  Somehow the worst thing was the loss of the eye. It made her look less than human. A velvet beauty patch clung to the corner of the empty socket, gaily mocking the bloody crater beside it. The patch was in the shape of a heart. You couldn’t see the other eye, because she was lying on her side.

  I said, ‘How long has she been here? Can you tell?’

  ‘Upwards of a week?’ The clerk tapped his nose, to give himself a look of worldly wisdom: he looked like a smug little boy strutting through the kitchen with his grandfather’s hat on his head. ‘When you’ve seen a few, you can form an opinion. It’s the smell, partly, and the way the skin goes.’

  I climbed out of the cellar, partly to get away from the stink of putrefaction and partly to get away from the clerk. We were in a section of ruins to the east of Fetter Lane, in what had been a court off Shoe Lane. The thoroughfares had been cleared in this area, but many of the buildings remained choked with their own debris.

  From where I was standing, the blackened remains of houses, shops and manufactories stretched down the slope to the polluted waters of the Fleet Ditch. Beyond it, Ludgate Hill rose to the City walls and the taller ruins behind it, dominated even now by the hulk of St Paul’s Cathedral. I turned the other way. There was the familiar tower of St Dunstan-in-the-West, with the roofs of Clifford’s Inn to the north.