The Fire Court

by Andrew Taylor

  A current of air brushed my cheeks. The stairs rounded a corner. A few steps more and I was on the landing.

  Chelling occupied the set of chambers at the back of the building. The other set was empty. I inched my way towards his door. The draught increased in force.

  The door was ajar. The hinges groaned as I pushed it open. The study beyond was in darkness but there was a line of light under the inner door to the bedchamber.

  ‘Mr Chelling?’ I called. ‘Are you there, sir? It’s Marwood.’

  There was no answer. At the same time a new smell reached my nostrils. Something was burning. The smell of sulphur was stronger.

  ‘Chelling!’ I cried.

  In the near darkness I blundered across the outer room, jarring my thigh against the table. I threw open the door. A flickering orange light almost blinded me. For an instant I stopped. Fully clothed, Chelling was lying face down on the bed. On the floor lay a pewter candlestick. Beside it was a ball of fire, little larger than a tennis ball. The window was wide open. As I stood in the doorway, cradling the bottle, flames began to lick up the bed curtain.

  I dropped the wine and lunged towards Chelling. I felt a tremendous blow on my skull. There was an explosion of blinding light. Somehow it managed to be both inside and outside my head.

  The world fragmented. I was on my hands and knees. An acute pain stabbed my side. Another savaged the back of my head.

  The air stank of burning and Malmsey. The ball of fire was much nearer now, its flames licking my face. Consciousness was sliding away from me. I curled up, as a babe in the womb.

  The bang of a door. Heat, growing hotter and hotter. Footsteps thundering down the stairs. Rough wood grazing my cheek.

  Hotter. Hotter.

  An instinct for preservation cut in. I seized the nearest bedpost and hauled myself up. Coughing, I kicked the fireball aside. The room was thick with smoke. I stumbled through the fog towards Chelling. The flames were growing higher and higher, running up the bed hangings and along the sleeve of his coat.

  I grabbed his ankle and tried to pull him on to the floor and through the doorway. He was a dead weight, and I couldn’t shift him. I dived into the flames and pushed my hands under his armpits. I dragged him from the mattress and through the door.

  The fire came with him.

  Someone was screaming. Oh Christ.

  The flames were dancing over me. I had long since lost my hat, the black silk streamers dissolving into fire. Chelling’s hair had caught and so had mine. Our hair sparkled and shrivelled and blackened like a firework display. The stench made me cough even more. I noticed that my hands were dripping with blood.

  Pulling my burden with a series of tugs, I staggered backwards across the study to the outer door. The flames followed us, filling the chamber with their gaudy, murderous light.

  The outer door was closed, though I had left it open. I let Chelling fall to the floor and lifted the latch.

  The door would not move, however hard I tugged. By now I was so desperate that I had almost forgotten poor Chelling. The air was now so hot it seared my lungs.

  The door was a flimsy thing, a ledge-and-brace affair more suited to an outbuilding than a lawyer’s chambers. I snatched up the elbow chair and swung it against the door with all my might. On the second blow, wood splintered and a gust of fresh air poured into the room, whipping up the flames like the blast from a pair of bellows.

  After two more blows I charged at it with my shoulder. The first time I bounced back and tripped over Chelling’s body, which reminded me that he was there. The second time, I plunged through splintering wood and sprawled on the floor, half inside and half outside the room. I tried to wriggle free, back to Chelling. I couldn’t. I was trapped by the wreckage of the door, unable to go forward or backward. I couldn’t even save my own skin.

  So this, I thought, in a moment of clarity, is where it ends.

  The last thing I remember was a flame that sent glowing tendrils dancing up to the landing. That and the screams. My screams.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  With the fields on one side and the park on the other, Pall Mall by night was almost as quiet as the country.

  Jemima turned over in the bed. After a while, Mary began to snore. The maid was lying on a mattress beside the bed. Jemima told her to be quiet, but the snoring continued. She parted the curtains, fumbled on the night table for her book, picked it up, and tossed it in the general direction of Mary’s face. The snoring stopped.

  Beyond the bed curtains, the room was in complete darkness. Philip was still not back. He had gone out after supper, just as he had the previous evening, saying he would not be late. She suspected that he was seeing Gromwell.

  The snoring began again, building gradually in volume.

  Jemima nursed her anger like a flame until it blazed up and made her swear aloud into the darkness. But then the fire died, leaving her cold and miserable. She wanted Philip back. She wanted Gromwell to go to the devil, along with his ill-omened name and his shabby finery.

  Then it was three o’clock, announced by the watchman’s hoarse voice in the street below and the sounds of distant church clocks. Dawn could not be far away.

  Later, she heard footsteps in the street, which paused outside the house. Two people, she thought, Philip and a link boy to light his way. There was a knock at the street door, and soon another, louder one when the porter failed to stir.

  Then came the rattle of bars and chains, and Philip’s slow footsteps crossing the hall and climbing the stairs. He walked down the landing, passing her door without stopping, and went into his own room. He closed the door softly.

  Time passed. The snoring stopped. Jemima tossed and turned. More time trickled painfully towards eternity, and suddenly she was seized by panic: soon she would be dead, and so would Philip; soon it would be too late for them all.

  Jemima sat up abruptly. She dangled her legs over the side of the bed. She trod on Mary; the maid stirred in her sleep, whimpered softly and slept on.

  The lantern that burned all night in the hall cast a faint outline around the doorframe. Jemima felt for her gown and wrapped it around her, drawing it tight against the chill of the night air. She pushed her feet into her slippers.

  Jemima did not bother to light her candle. She made her way to the door, unlatched it and stood for a moment listening, while the draughts of the house swirled around her ankles.

  She stepped on to the landing and closed the door. The house by night was dingy and unfamiliar. She padded along the passage to her husband’s door. She did not knock. She raised the latch and went in.

  Two candles burned on the mantle. Philip was sitting on the side of the bed. His wig lay like an untidy black spaniel beside him. He had thrown off his coat and waistcoat. A cap of short, black hair shadowed his scalp. He looked like a boy.

  Something moved inside her, as if her heart twitched and twisted of its own volition. She closed the door and crossed the room towards her husband. She perched on the bed, sitting to his right, leaving a few inches between them. He did not stir.

  ‘Philip,’ she said. ‘What ails you?’

  He raised his head and looked at her. His eyes were black pools. The heavy lids drooped over them. Why was he so troubled? She had never seen him like this. It must be something to do with the letter that had come this afternoon, the letter that had sent him into a rage, and with the woman whose body had been found in the ruins, the woman in the yellow silk gown. Had it been Celia? And did his sorrow mean that he had loved her?

  Neither spoke. He was breathing very slowly. Gradually her own breathing slowed until it matched his, breath for breath.

  After a while, Jemima put her arms around him. He didn’t pull away from her. Holding her breath, she drew him down on her breast. When all was said and done, he was her husband.

  She stroked his head as if it were a small, hard animal in need of comfort. Philip’s natural hair was surprisingly fine and soft. Like a little boy’s.
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  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Brennan was as impossible to ignore as a bad smell. Cat couldn’t see him but she heard his breathing. The hairs lifted on the back of her neck.

  ‘Sunday tomorrow, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Cat bent closer to her drawing board and hoped that he would take the hint.

  ‘Thought I might take a boat on the river.’

  She said nothing. With luck, Brennan would drown himself in the Thames. His footsteps drew nearer. She caught sight of him to the right, at the edge of her range of vision. He was closer than she liked.

  ‘Old skin-and-bones gives you Sunday afternoon as a holiday, doesn’t he?’

  She glanced up, nodded and went back to her work.

  He was directly in front of the window now, blocking her light. ‘Want to come along with me? I know this tavern on the Surrey side. They have music there. Dancing, too. You’d like it.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’ Besides, she didn’t like music much, or dancing, though she had no intention of revealing that much of herself to him.

  He came closer. He was head and shoulders taller than she was. She put down her pen and pushed her right hand into her pocket.

  He stretched out his hand and picked up her dividers. He smiled and showed his teeth, not a pretty sight. ‘The cat’s claws.’

  Cat. The word jolted her. Brennan couldn’t know that in her old life she was Catherine, known as Cat from childhood, especially to herself. But was it possible the man was more than he seemed?

  ‘Give them back to me,’ she said, keeping her voice low. ‘If you please.’

  ‘All in good time. I don’t want you scratching me again, do I? What about it then? The river. It’s going to be a fine day.’

  She said nothing. Had her cousin or even one of her dead father’s friends sent him here to find her? Perhaps this lure of an outing on the river was nothing more than a ploy to kidnap her, or worse.

  ‘You’re trembling,’ he said. ‘Why would you tremble? If you’re cold, I know a way to warm a maid.’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘I’ll tell Mr Hakesby that you are pestering me.’

  ‘And I’ll say you were imagining it, as silly girls do, and in any case old skin-and-bones won’t want to believe you. He can’t afford to lose me just now. You know that’s the truth.’

  Cat glared at him. ‘Then he’ll lose me instead.’

  Brennan smiled. ‘That’s what I like about you. Your spirit. Come on the river tomorrow. You know you want to. I know you want to.’

  ‘Give me the dividers.’

  He slipped his left hand over her wrist, and his right arm encircled her shoulders. He drew her towards him. She felt the tip of one of the dividers press through her clothes, and touch the surface of her skin.

  ‘Come on, my little sweeting. One kiss, eh?’

  There was only one thing left to do so Cat did it. She snatched her right hand from her pocket. She was holding the unsheathed knife, given her long ago by an old man who used to call her Cat when she was a child. She stabbed it into Brennan’s left arm where the shirt cuff met the wrist. He howled and leapt backwards, knocking over her drawing board with a great clatter. He dropped the dividers and clamped his right hand over the wound. Blood appeared between his fingers.

  ‘You bitch, you punk, you devilish little quean—’

  Knife in hand, she advanced towards him. He backed away from her. She saw fear in his eyes. She was glad of it. ‘Next time I’ll slit your throat,’ she said softly. ‘Or cut off your manhood.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he said. His eyes darted about the drawing office, looking for a weapon. ‘I’ll make you suffer, God’s breath I will.’

  Without warning, the door opened. Hakesby was on the threshold. He stared at them as if they were a pair of ghosts.

  Brennan’s mouth fell open. Cat’s drawing board was on the floor. The plan she had been working on, she now saw, had detached itself from its clips. She was standing on it. Worse than that, she had a knife in her hand, and Brennan was bleeding, bright red splashes on the floorboards.

  But Hakesby seemed not to notice. ‘Chelling’s dead,’ he said in a voice that sounded like someone else’s. ‘It’s all they could talk about in the coffee house. And Marwood will be dead soon too.’

  Arm in arm, Hakesby and Cat followed the cobbled way from the Strand, passed under the archway where a porter sat dozing with a cat on his knee, and entered the precincts of the Savoy.

  ‘It’s not too late,’ Hakesby said, tugging on her arm. ‘We can turn back.’

  Cat stopped. ‘You may go back if you wish, sir.’

  ‘This is folly. You know it is.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. I must know how he is. He may be dead.’

  ‘In which case,’ Hakesby said, scenting an opening, ‘there’s nothing we can do. So—’

  ‘He saved my life once.’ She looked up at him. ‘I pay my debts.’

  ‘Oh, be damned to it.’ Hakesby rarely swore. ‘You obstinate girl. Come then, but be quick about it. All we shall do is enquire after him.’

  They walked on. Had she been by herself, Cat would have soon lost her way, for the old palace was a clutter of blind alleys, blank walls and dark courts. But Hakesby knew the place, as he seemed to know all of London, and he guided her into the winding lane near the foul-smelling graveyard, which led them eventually to Marwood’s lodging in Infirmary Close.

  Cat knocked. The door was opened by a wiry man with a weatherbeaten face and only one foot. He leaned on his crutch and scowled at them.

  ‘We are come to enquire after Mr Marwood,’ Hakesby said.

  ‘He’s not well.’

  The man began to close the door. Cat put her foot in the way.

  ‘Take it out,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll squeeze it till you only have one foot worth mentioning. Like me.’

  ‘Is he dying?’ Hakesby said.

  ‘You’re Sam,’ Cat said. ‘He’s mentioned you. You went to that alley by the tavern with him.’

  His eyes widened. ‘He told you that? You?’

  ‘Why not? What’s it to you?’

  She held his eyes until the man shrugged and looked at Hakesby instead. But he relaxed the pressure of the door on the side of Cat’s foot.

  ‘We’ve been helping him in this matter,’ she said. ‘The alley off Fetter Lane? The tall thin man?’

  He grunted. ‘Sourface. That’s what I call him.’

  ‘Listen,’ Cat said. ‘Is that your master?’

  The sound of screaming wasn’t loud. But it was unmistakable.

  ‘He’s not dead yet.’ Sam grimaced, and the lines deepened on his face. ‘He’s got a good voice on him, even now, after hours of it.’

  He opened the door more widely and stepped back. He hadn’t actually asked them to come in but Cat took it as an invitation.

  ‘What happened?’ Hakesby asked.

  Sam closed the door. He said in a hoarse whisper: ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t know what’s going on. We had a man down from Whitehall this morning, saying why wasn’t master on his way to Scotland. To Scotland? What the devil was that about? And I said to the fellow, just you listen to him, that’s why my master’s not on the road to Scotland or anywhere else. He was howling even worse then. They could probably hear him the other side of the river.’

  ‘What does the doctor say?’ Cat said.

  ‘We sent for him but he hasn’t come yet. My wife’s doing her best.’

  Hakesby shivered. He sat down suddenly on a chest against the wall.

  ‘Take me to your master,’ Cat said.

  Sam stared blankly at her.

  ‘Now,’ she snapped.

  ‘Why?’ Hakesby said, his voice querulous. ‘What could you do?’

  She rounded on him. ‘I have some knowledge of how to treat burns.’

  A door opened above them. A woman’s voice called down the stairs, ‘Sam? Is that the doctor?
’

  Before either of the men could say anything, Cat went quickly up the stairs, across the landing and into a small chamber whose door stood open. A figure swathed in white lay on the bed. For a second, she thought it was a corpse, because the face was covered.

  But the figure was tossing from side to side. In the middle of the blank white head was the pink, open wound of the mouth. Dead men didn’t moan, and this one did – continuously and loudly.

  The servant by the bed was stout and red-faced, her skin shiny with sweat. She threw a glance at Cat and scowled. ‘Get out. I don’t want a nurse, I want the doctor.’

  ‘I’m not a nurse,’ Cat said. ‘How bad are the burns?’

  The servant frowned at her, but something in Cat’s tone made her answer. ‘The left side of his face is the worst, then the left arm and the leg. They pulled him out before his clothes went up. He’s lucky to be alive.’

  The figure on the bed screamed again.

  ‘Lucky?’ Hakesby murmured from the doorway behind Cat.

  ‘Go away,’ the servant snapped.

  ‘Beg pardon, master,’ Sam said. ‘Margaret doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s—’

  ‘Those sheets won’t do,’ Cat interrupted. ‘We need to wrap the burned skin in cerecloths.’

  ‘None in the house,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Then send Sam out for them.’

  ‘There’s no money to pay for it.’

  ‘We will pay,’ Cat said.

  Hakesby stirred. ‘But—’

  ‘Have you a salve?’

  ‘No,’ Margaret said. ‘And how would I find time to make a salve now? God give me patience.’

  Marwood was moaning now, the sound rising and falling.

  ‘Poor devil,’ Sam muttered to Hakesby behind Cat’s back. ‘And all for nothing. The other man died. You know – the one he tried to save.’

  ‘The apothecary in Three Cocks Yard sells ready-made cakes of a salve,’ Cat said.

  Margaret threw a glance at her. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Ground ivy simmered in deer suet. I’ve seen it used, applied with a feather. It helps.’