The Fire Court

by Andrew Taylor

  I nodded, touching the left side of my face, which was stinging. I could not stop myself. Not that touching did any good.

  ‘As it happens,’ Williamson went on, ‘Sir Philip is the petitioner in a case at present before the Fire Court.’ He paused. ‘Where that acquaintance of yours worked. Chelling.’

  I took up my wine and emptied the glass in one.

  ‘The principal defendant is a man named Poulton,’ he continued in his steady, methodical way as if briefing a committee. ‘A cloth merchant. A man of substance, and a good reputation in the City, I understand, where he has many friends. The dispute centres on a site near Cheapside known as Dragon Yard. Sir Philip owns the freehold, but the existing leaseholders restrict what he can do with it. Poulton’s niece, Mistress Hampney, is another leaseholder – she’s a widow, so she controls it absolutely. Strangely enough, she was found murdered the other day. As you know, because at my command you inspected the body where it was found: in the ruins to the east of Clifford’s Inn.’ He paused again. ‘Clifford’s Inn is where the Fire Court sits. Where Mr Chelling, the court’s clerk, lived and died. It is like a dance, is it not, Marwood? Round and round we go. And always back to the Fire Court and the Dragon Yard.’

  He looked at me. He wanted me to say something, heaven knows what. His words were clear enough in themselves: but, like ripples on the surface of a pond, they also marked the presence of something beneath the surface.

  ‘Something’s going on here,’ he said at last. ‘We both know that, don’t we? So does Mr Poulton.’

  I began to understand. Poulton must have friends at Court as well as in the City. Including, perhaps, Mr Williamson.

  ‘Will it heal?’ he said.

  The question took me by surprise, and I did not know how to reply.

  He clicked his fingers. ‘Your face, Marwood, your face. Will it always be badly scarred?’

  For answer I took up a candle, holding it at arm’s length because I was now afraid of fire. I turned my head so that Williamson could see the left side of my face by the light of the flame. He leaned closer, frowning, and then wrinkling up his nose when the smell of the apothecary’s salve reached his nostrils. The inflamed skin was sticky with the thick paste, the preparation of ground ivy and God knew what else mixed into the deer suet. I pushed aside the loose bandage to show him what remained of my left ear.

  ‘Good God,’ he said, recoiling.

  ‘This will not mend,’ I said. ‘As for the rest, the doctor thinks my cheek and neck will show the scars until the day I die. The question is, how badly … The hair may grow back on that side of the head, he says, or it may not.’

  Williamson sat back on the bench. ‘You must have a periwig. A good full one.’

  ‘When I can afford it, sir.’

  ‘You shall have it sooner than that. And you must live, too. I shall make an advance on your salary.’

  I began to stammer my thanks.

  ‘But the periwig,’ he interrupted, frowning. ‘That’s another matter. If you are to be of any use to Lord Arlington in future, we cannot have you looking so monstrous.’ He must have seen something in my expression, for he checked himself and then went on in a gentler voice. ‘But we shall make the best of it. I shall advise his lordship that you should have a grant from the Special Fund. Five or six pounds should be ample. There’s no point in wasting time – I’ll send my perruquier to you. It’s a pity you lost so much of your own hair in the fire but we shall see what the man can contrive.’

  I thanked him. The kindness – if that’s what it was – made my eyes fill with tears. I felt a great weariness and wished he would leave me. Instead, and to my surprise, he took another glass of wine and settled back, his elbow on the table, as if he had all the time in the world.

  ‘And now, Marwood,’ he said, ‘let us talk confidentially.’ He leaned towards me. ‘But first you have to choose where your loyalties lie. No man can serve two masters, or not for—’

  He broke off, for at that moment we both became aware of a commotion below, of raised voices and running footsteps. Margaret screamed.

  Gripping the arms of the chair, I pulled myself to my feet. Williamson also stood up. For an instant, our eyes met, and I saw my own confusion mirrored in his face.

  Then came the sound of a shot.

  Leaning on Williamson’s arm, I descended the stairs to the kitchen. Below us was the sound of Margaret shouting at Sam, upbraiding him, and his deeper voice making a quieter counterpoint to hers.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I broke away from Williamson and flung open the kitchen door. Silence fell like a stone. Williamson held up the candle he had brought with him. The room smelled powerfully of gunpowder. Tendrils of smoke moved sluggishly, wreathing around Margaret and Sam. They were on either side of the table, their faces staring open-mouthed at me as if I were an apparition from the far side of the grave.

  Cat appeared in the doorway to the larder, bringing more smoke with her. Her eyes widened when she saw me, with Williamson looming behind.

  ‘You could have killed us!’ Margaret said to her husband. ‘You fool.’

  ‘What would you have me do, woman?’ Sam roared at her.

  ‘Hold your tongue,’ I shouted. ‘Both of you.’

  Williamson pushed past me. ‘What’s this?’ he demanded. ‘Are you all mad?’

  Cat said, ‘They were trying to burn the house down.’

  I walked unsteadily to the table and lowered myself on to the bench. Sam’s pistol lay before me. I touched the barrel. It was warm.

  ‘I heard a noise in the larder.’ Cat had changed her gown since I had last seen her. She was wearing what looked like an old gown of Margaret’s, a patched and faded garment that hung on her shoulders like an overlarge sack and trailed on the floor. ‘Someone forced the window.’

  ‘A burglar?’ I said. ‘That window’s hardly big enough for a cat.’

  The larder was served by a north-facing window that looked on to the alley at the front of the house. It was less than twelve inches square and protected down the middle by a vertical iron bar the thickness of a man’s thumb.

  ‘Big enough for a firebomb,’ she said.

  Williamson strode across the room, pushed her aside and inspected the larder by the light of the candle. He prodded something on the larder floor with his foot. He stooped down to it.

  ‘The girl’s right,’ he said, looking back at me.

  ‘It was struggling to stay alight,’ Cat said. ‘I threw my apron over it. And then—’

  ‘And then Samuel must seize his pistol and rush into the larder and fire in the darkness like a foolish, overgrown boy.’ Margaret shook her fist in her husband’s face. ‘Scaring us out of our wits, and to no purpose.’

  ‘Who did it?’ I said.

  They looked blankly at me. Cat said, ‘I heard someone running away.’

  Williamson returned to the kitchen, carrying a bundled apron. He set it on the table and carefully pulled back the scorched folds. There was a harmless-looking, dun-coloured ball with an acrid smell rising from it.

  ‘Raise the alarm,’ Williamson said to Sam.

  ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘It’s too late.’

  Whoever had done this was long gone. It was hopeless. The Savoy was poorly lit. Although the gates were meant to be locked in the evening, there were so many people coming and going that the porters did not trouble themselves overmuch and left the wickets open for latecomers until midnight and sometimes beyond.

  Williamson raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Why would …?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Someone meant us harm. But it also occurred to me that there was no better way than a well-placed firebomb to force the inhabitants of a house to flee in a panic. Perhaps someone had wanted to flush me out, and bring me into the open. Or, if not me, then Cat.

  ‘Well?’ Williamson said, when he had made sure the parlour door was fastened.

  I said nothing. We had left Sam and Margaret in the kitchen,
and climbing the stairs had exhausted me.

  Williamson took my right arm and helped me to sit. He bent down, and I felt his breath on the skin of my undamaged ear as he whispered, ‘I told you, Marwood. No man can serve two masters. So which is it to be? Chiffinch or me?’

  ‘I choose you, sir.’

  It was not only that I earned money through my connection with him, or that he was here in person to ask me such a question. It was that Chiffinch served no one but himself. He even served the King his master because he knew it was in his interests to do so. He would lie, cheat and bribe if it served his purpose.

  So would Mr Williamson, perhaps. But there was more to him than a man of ability and ambition: there was also something as hard and uncompromising as his northern vowels and bluntness of speech; something private to the man himself; something I thought I could trust. I didn’t think he would willingly break his word, even to a clerk who served him.

  ‘Good.’ He waved his hand as if sweeping the matter aside. ‘I’ve no doubt that Chiffinch gave you that fool’s errand to go to Scotland because Sir Philip Limbury made it worth his while. I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but Limbury must think you a threat to his case before the Fire Court. And I had no choice but to permit it – Chiffinch showed me the King’s signature on the warrant. I doubt the King knew what he was signing. He trusts Chiffinch, and will oblige him if he can without trouble to himself. I don’t like Chiffinch interfering with the work of my department. But he’s made a mistake, Marwood – he’s overreached himself. If the King hears what Chiffinch has been doing in his name, he won’t be happy. He places a particular value on the Fire Court and the fairness of its judgements. He abhors anything that might harm its reputation, because that would lead to a rash of appeals against its verdicts. If the court loses public confidence, it affects the rebuilding of London.’

  ‘What would you have me do, sir?’

  Williamson didn’t answer me directly. ‘And there’s more,’ he whispered. ‘As you know.’

  I shivered. ‘You mean Mistress Hampney?’

  ‘Aye. So. If you wish to continue as my clerk, Marwood, now is the moment when you must speak frankly to me and conceal nothing. Agreed?’

  I bowed my head. ‘I think Limbury seduced Mistress Hampney in the hope she would side with him in the Fire Court. They met in Clifford’s Inn, in the rooms of a friend, a man named Gromwell. He and Limbury had been intimate friends since their schooldays. There is a private way to go unseen into his building from Fetter Lane. I think she refused to do as he wished, and perhaps threatened to expose him when she realized what he really wanted. They quarrelled, and it ended in him killing her. Later her body was moved out and left among the ruins where it was found, in the hope that no one would connect it to Limbury or Clifford’s Inn.’

  ‘And the Fire Court clerk who was killed in the fire?’ Williamson interrupted. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Chelling, sir,’ I reminded him. ‘He knew something of this. He hated Limbury’s friend, Gromwell. I believe he tried to turn the affair to his advantage, and Limbury decided that it was safer to kill than pay him off.’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘No.’ My concentration was waning. ‘I saw a letter in his room. It could have been an attempt at blackmail.’

  ‘I need more than a theory, Marwood.’

  ‘There was a fireball burning his bedchamber where I found him.’

  ‘Another fireball? Why didn’t you mention it earlier?’

  ‘And when I tried to drag him out, someone hit me on the head and locked the door from the outside. I heard footsteps running down the stairs.’

  Williamson let out his breath in a long sigh. ‘Ah,’ he said softly, a smile of unexpected sweetness spreading over his face. ‘So Chiffinch may be an accessory to murder twice over. An accessory after the fact of the Widow Hampney’s murder. And quite possibly before the fact of Chelling’s.’

  He looked at me, as if expecting a comment on what he had said, or further information that touched on it. That was the moment when I might have said it: that I believed that another death was connected to this: my father’s. If he had not fallen under a wagon, I should not have been here, now, scarred for life, and trading secrets like a conspirator with Mr Williamson.

  The smile vanished abruptly. ‘But we can’t prove it, Marwood. It all rests on your word. And what is your word worth against Sir Philip Limbury’s? Besides, you didn’t see his face when Chelling died. We can’t prove he killed Mistress Hampney, either. It’s all speculation.’

  I said, almost pleading with him, ‘You saw what happened this evening, sir, with your own eyes. Someone tried to burn my house down. If it wasn’t something to do with Limbury, who else could it have been?’

  ‘That’s the question. Who else?’

  A thought struck me. ‘What manner of man is Limbury, sir? Tall, short – fat, thin?’

  ‘He’s tall and dark,’ Williamson said. ‘Not a handsome man, but vigorous. He has a taste for wearing black that sets him a little apart at Court. Why?’

  ‘I saw such a man in conversation with Mr Chiffinch last Friday.’

  ‘Where was this?

  ‘On the Privy Stairs. Mr Chiffinch escorted him into a boat and then came back to see me. That was when he told me I must go to Inverness.’

  ‘Then you must see Limbury, and as soon as possible. If he is the man, it is another scrap of circumstantial evidence. But it is still not enough. If you are to be truly useful to me, you must find evidence that Limbury is a murderer and Chiffinch is his accessory. Can you do that for me?’

  I was on the verge of saying that no one could promise to do that and be sure of keeping his word. But Williamson’s face was as unyielding as one of his northern mountains.

  ‘I will do whatever I can, sir. I swear it.’

  It wasn’t good enough, and we both knew it. He tapped me on the right knee and said, ‘You had two masters, Marwood. Now you have one. Take care you do not end up with none.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Faith moves mountains. So do money and hatred.

  Sam kept watch throughout the night, dozing for an hour or two in the kitchen and then patrolling the house. He had a sailor’s ability to slip in and out of sleep and wake, cat-like, to the slightest sound that deviated from the ordinary.

  I summoned him in the morning. ‘Do you know a tavern called the Cardinal’s Hat?’

  He scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘There’s one over the river. Lambeth way – but not near the palace. Further upstream.’

  ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘I’ve drunk everywhere, master,’ he said, with quiet pride.

  ‘Everywhere?’

  ‘As near as gets no difference. Cardinal’s Hat used to get its main business in the summer. Not much of a place, but you can sit outside and watch the river.’

  We were interrupted by a knock at the door. A messenger from Williamson’s office had brought me the promised money. Later, after dinner, the perruquier called with his boy and showed me his samples. He was a Frenchman with a lined face. He darted about like a monkey and stroked his wigs as though they were living things in need of comfort. His hands were gentle on my head, and he caused me hardly any pain.

  Nor did he refer to my injuries, except indirectly when he advised me to choose one of the fuller, longer wigs he had in stock, and when he advised that softer, finer hair would be less of an irritant to the skin. Then he and his boy bowed themselves out of the room, promising to return on Monday with the wig ready for the final fitting.

  After they had gone, Cat came to me with a letter in her hand. ‘Will you send Sam out with this, sir? It’s for Mr Hakesby.’

  ‘What have you told him?’

  ‘Nothing. Only that I am safe and will return.’

  ‘He may guess where you are.’

  Her lips twisted, and for a moment her face looked years older than it was. ‘He probably does. But guessing isn’t the
same as knowing.’

  I gave her money for Sam. Rather than leaving me, she hovered by my chair.

  ‘What did Mr Williamson mean last night? When he said no man can serve two masters.’

  So she had heard his whisper in the kitchen. I was tempted to tell her to mind her own business. But of course I had made it her business, which was the reason why she was obliged to hide in my house, quite possibly at risk of her life.

  I told her the gist of what Williamson had said on Friday night, and how I had thrown in my lot with him and undertaken the impossible task of finding proof of Limbury’s guilt and Chiffinch’s collusion with him.

  ‘The King would not ignore that,’ I said. ‘He could not. Particularly because it touches on the Fire Court and could harm its reputation.’

  ‘But how can you prove anything?’ Cat said, glancing at me. She didn’t mean to be unkind, but her look was almost contemptuous. You, it said, a man in your pitiable condition.

  I should not have believed it possible that on Monday, a mere three days after Williamson’s visit, I should be walking up and down my own parlour – slowly, it is true, and with great caution.

  For the first time I was wearing my new purchase – a fine, full wig of lustrous brown hair that flowed down to my shoulders and masked my ears and much of my face from prying eyes. Its weight felt warm and unfamiliar on my head. It was also painful, despite the dressings that protected the burns on my scalp and face. But I was vain enough to think that a little more suffering was a price worth paying.

  The perruquier stood back to admire his handiwork, flinging out his arms in wonder. ‘Ah, monsieur,’ he said, ‘que vous êtes beau! The ladies will flock to you, sir.’

  The boy mirrored his master’s gestures exactly, and I swear his lips moved, as though he were silently echoing his master’s words. Not in mockery, for his face was serious: he was learning his trade. Sam was standing behind me, near the door. I distinctly heard him smother a laugh.

  When the perruquier and his boy had gone, I told Sam to bring my old cloak and hat. My new ones – made to show I was in mourning for my father – had been ruined by the fire.