The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

The soldiers peeled away the sail and held it up as a makeshift curtain. It swayed in the breeze. I stared at the body. The man was lying on his side, facing us, with his arms wrenched behind him. He was short and skinny, with unexpectedly fleshy lips around a large mouth, much like a frog’s. He wore his own hair, which was thin and grey. His chin was thick with stubble. There was bruising on the temple.

  I pushed aside the flap of his grey coat with the toe of my shoe. The breeches were held up with a broad belt.

  ‘Papist!’ one of the bystanders yelled. ‘Damned French Papist.’

  At a sign from Thurloe, the bier was placed on the ground beside the body. The guardsmen lifted the dead man by his shoulders and knees. The bound arms made it difficult for them. The soldier at the head lost his grip. The corpse’s head smacked on the wet cobbles.

  The soldier carrying the legs gave a yell and jumped back. The lower half of the body tumbled off the bier. The canvas curtain fell to the ground. The corpse’s mouth gaped in a pink and foolish grin.

  Thurloe swore. ‘Free his arms,’ he said. ‘Get him on the bier.’

  ‘He’s not dead!’ someone shouted from the little crowd, which was growing larger. ‘Hang him!’

  A soldier cut the strip of leather that tied the thumbs. He and the comrade dragged the body onto the bier as if it had been a sack of carrots.

  ‘Kill him!’ cried another. ‘Kill them all.’

  Thurloe glanced over his shoulder. His men were already turning towards the crowd and drawing into a knot to protect the corner where the body lay. Their hands rested on the hilts of their heavy swords.

  For the first time I felt a frisson of fear running up my spine. The crowd had swollen to almost twenty people, most of them young men. The larger the crowd, the more stupid it became.

  Thurloe turned his head and spat at them.

  I looked down at the body. Its head had been thrown to one side when it was tossed on the bier. The face was on its side, looking away from me.

  ‘Are they right?’ I said. ‘Is he a Papist?’

  ‘No sign of it if he is. Anyway, those scum don’t think, damn them. They don’t think anything at all.’

  The sparse hair of the dead man had rearranged itself so the back of the neck was visible. There was a line of blood on the skin.

  ‘A moment, sir.’

  I knelt by the body and probed the back of the skull with my fingers.

  ‘Best not to linger,’ Thurloe said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘He wasn’t drowned. Look.’

  There was a wound in the back of the neck, just below the skull. The man had been stabbed, the blade driving up into the skull. If there had been much blood, the water had washed it away.

  ‘Your eyes are sharp, sir,’ Thurloe said. ‘Now let us be off.’

  Whoever did this thing, I thought, he knew what he was doing, and his method was the same as that of Layne’s killer. So were the bound thumbs. I noticed something else – a row of pins, four of them, stuck in the collar of the coat so that only their heads were visible.

  Thurloe looked at the crowd and lost patience with me. ‘You can stay if you want, sir. At your peril. You two. Take the bier in front. The rest of you behind – down to the dock.’

  Nobody said anything as we crossed the footbridge, marched down to the dock and loaded the bier onto the barge. The bystanders kept their distance. Once we were over the bridge, they dropped away, one by one.

  Thurloe and I took the stern seat under the awning.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said. ‘But there comes a point with a crowd like that when a man must fight or go.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. There was no point in quarrelling with him. The oarsmen pulled out into the river. ‘I wish we knew who he was,’ I went on. ‘Someone must know.’

  ‘There’s a good chance you do, isn’t there?’

  The barge rocked slightly as the bier was manoeuvred aboard.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s in my report,’ Thurloe said, as if I were to blame for not having had a sight of it beforehand. ‘There was a name in the Bible. The ink had run but you could still read it: Jeremiah Sneyd.’

  Sneyd. The name was very faintly familiar to me, and I knew the memory of it was lodged somewhere in my childhood.

  ‘Were the bound thumbs in the report as well?’ I asked, suddenly wary.

  ‘Of course they were.’

  ‘Who did you report to?’

  ‘My captain. Then I was brought before a man called Master Williamson.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IT WAS DARK before I returned to Chelsea, to our lodgings with the Ralstons. Now the nights were growing longer, I found it harder to ignore the inconveniences of living so far from London. The roads were dangerous. The watermen were reluctant to venture this far upstream after nightfall. Those who would, charged accordingly.

  Much of the day had been taken up with conveying the body to Whitehall and arranging to have it lodged in the cellar of Scotland Yard. If Williamson had been there when the barge had reached Whitehall, the job could have been done in half the time.

  In Chelsea, I found my father dozing by the fire in the kitchen.

  Mistress Ralston jerked her head at him. ‘He’s not been himself today.’

  I shrugged. My father hadn’t been himself for five years or more.

  ‘Look at him, twitching like that. He mutters to himself like a cage full of monkeys.’

  ‘He’s old, mistress. We shall be the same one day, no doubt. If we’re spared that long.’

  ‘He was crying earlier. Master Ralston said it put him off his meat.’

  ‘I’m sorry for it,’ I said.

  ‘And he was going on and on about walking to Whitehall with you. But saying it was winter. The Thames was frozen over.’

  Oh no, I thought. Not this.

  ‘Someone was crying fit to burst, he said, and you started crying too.’

  Yes, I thought, I remember it all too well. I was a child again, holding my father’s hand and on our way to Whitehall. The sky had been as mottled and grey as a piece of ageing meat on a butcher’s stall. There had been little noise apart from the keening of the gulls, the shuffling of feet, the jingle of harness and a low rumble of deep voices like distant thunder.

  ‘And all the time, he was weeping fit to burst,’ Mistress Ralston went on. ‘It’s not a comfortable thing to have in a respectable house.’

  It hadn’t been comfortable at the time, I wanted to say, so why should it be comfortable now? In Whitehall, there had been soldiers, both cavalry and foot. The nearer we had come to the palace itself, the denser the crush of people. But the crowd had not been merry like townsfolk on a holiday or restless and loud like apprentices on the rampage or even sombre like a congregation around a preacher.

  Mistress Ralston worked herself into a passion of righteousness. ‘I tell you what, sir, my husband’s had enough. That’s what he said to me. He’s a fair man but there’s only so much that flesh and blood can bear.’ She sniffed. ‘In particular when it’s not your own flesh and blood.’

  I knew that Master Ralston was no more than a convenient mouthpiece for Mistress Ralston in these matters. I said, ‘My father’s not usually so bad. I’ll help him upstairs.’

  But Mistress Ralston wasn’t finished. She drew me away from the fire. ‘He was praying aloud in the middle of the garden this afternoon. Bareheaded, and no coat. It was raining.’

  ‘His wits wander. But there’s no harm in him.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ Mistress Ralston lowered her voice still further. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t just prayers. It sounded next best thing to treason, what he was saying. I can’t have that sort of loose talk, not in my house. It sets tongues wagging, and you know it does. I’d be sorry to lose you, but Master Ralston says the pair of you will have to go if it continues.’

  She wasn’t sorry at all. She was probably looking for an excuse to get rid of us. Since the Fire, there was a sh
ortage of accommodation even this far from London, and she would be able to charge a new tenant far more than we were paying her.

  I woke my father, took him outside to relieve himself and then helped him up the steep stairs to the chamber we shared.

  Movement and fresh air temporarily revived the old man. ‘Babylon,’ he murmured as he climbed, hauling himself up by the rail fixed to the side of the stairs. With each stair he reached, he produced another name. ‘Persia. Greece. Rome.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ I had heard these words often before. ‘Hush. Save your breath for climbing.’

  ‘And then at last the Fifth Empire, thank the Lord.’ He raised his voice. ‘The mighty shall be cast down, and become as dust at the feet of the righteous. Praise the Lord.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Mistress Ralston called up from the kitchen.

  I persuaded my father out of his clothes and into his nightgown. The old man knelt to say his prayers, insisting that I join him. Once in bed, he looked up at me.

  ‘Shall we sing a Psalm, James?’

  ‘No, not tonight,’ I said quickly.

  My father had an unexpectedly high voice. Once it had been sweet and true, but now he could not hold a note. When he sang, he sang so fervently that his voice was audible at the far end of the orchard.

  He opened his mouth.

  ‘Tell me, sir,’ I said. ‘Did you know a man named Sneyd?’

  The question distracted him. He shook his head violently, rolling it to and fro on the pillow. ‘No, no. I know no one.’

  ‘Hush.’

  ‘Except my God. And you. I don’t know Jeremiah Sneyd, I’m quite sure of that.’ Master Marwood’s eyelids fluttered. ‘Perhaps I used to, but I can’t remember, not at present. I can’t remember anything now, my dear.’ He closed his eyes, screwing them tightly shut as a child does. ‘Except that Jesus will save me, praise be to God.’

  I kissed my father’s forehead, picked up the candle and tiptoed from the chamber.

  Sneyd, I thought. Jeremiah Sneyd. He knew the man’s name was Jeremiah.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I LISTENED TO the rain on the window and wished that someone would give me a cup of warmed wine or at least stand me by a fire. After months of near-drought, the rain had fallen almost unceasingly for the last week. I had walked from Chelsea to Whitehall and my clothes were damp. My left shoe had sprung a leak. My stockings were streaked with mud and ash.

  ‘You were late again,’ Williamson said.

  ‘Your pardon, sir. I came by the road, and the way was difficult because of the rain.’

  ‘Then come by river. Or move closer to Whitehall.’ Master Williamson paused to gather his thoughts. ‘What is it, Marwood?’ he said in a quieter voice. ‘You look more like death than a head on a spike.’

  ‘My father was restless last night, sir, and I had no sleep.’

  ‘You know that’s nothing to me. He’s lucky to be alive and in his own bed. How is he?’

  ‘His own wits wander a little further every day, and every day they take longer to return. He’s harmless enough but our landlady doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Then find other lodgings.’

  ‘It won’t be easy. Especially now, because of the Fire. Would you, sir, be so kind as to …?’

  ‘If I have time, and if I think you deserve it, I may consider the matter.’ Williamson pushed back his chair and gathered together the papers on his desk. ‘Now – I can spare you only a moment – my Lord Arlington is waiting, so we must be brief. This man from the Fleet.’

  ‘Sneyd, sir,’ I said softly. ‘Jeremiah Sneyd.’

  ‘Perhaps. If the Bible was his. There’s a Sneyd who used to live with his wife near Cursitor Street. He was once recorded as a Fifth Monarchist. It’s not a common name. Go and see if it was him that turned up in the river. Don’t say you’ve come from here, of course – say your father was asking after them.’

  Williamson marched to the door, looking at me as he passed with a flicker of malice on his face. ‘Perhaps they’ll talk to you when they hear your name. Or the widow will, if it’s the man we want.’

  I opened the door and stood aside. So that was why the name of Jeremiah Sneyd had been familiar to me, and to my father. I would wager good money that he and my father had attended the same meetings.

  ‘You can pray together,’ Williamson said.

  Cursitor Street was a narrow thoroughfare east of Chancery Lane. I asked after the Sneyds at a chop-house on the north side, but drew a blank. This did not surprise me, for I guessed that they were not the sort of people who had the money or inclination to frequent such places. I tried a butcher nearby with no more luck, and then a cookhouse, with the same result.

  Then I remembered the four pins in the dead man’s coat. I went into a tailor’s shop and asked if he knew a man named Sneyd.

  ‘Sneyd?’ cried the tailor, who was cross-legged by the window, sewing a waistcoat. ‘Of course I do. But where is he? Faith, he could hardly have chosen a worse time to stay away.’

  ‘He works here, sir?’

  ‘He does piecework. Nothing too fine or delicate. His eyes aren’t up to it.’ While he was speaking, the tailor continued to drive his needle in and out of the fabric. ‘But he’s usually reliable, if nothing else.’

  ‘You were expecting him today?’

  ‘Yesterday. I sent word to his lodging, saying I had something for him. But I’ve heard nothing.’

  ‘Where does he lodge?’

  ‘Ramikin Row, off Took’s Court. The third turning on the left, past the pump. It’s the house by the sign of the three stars.’ The needle paused for a moment. ‘If you find him, tell him that he needn’t bother coming back.’

  The house had seen better days. It tottered over the street, each of its storeys jettied out a little further than the one below. There was a shop selling rags on the ground floor. I asked there, and the shopman sent me up the rickety stairs to the top floor.

  ‘Mind how you go, master,’ he called after me. ‘Sneyd’s as sour as vinegar these days.’

  I was glad to be out of the rain. The house was let out by the room, and many faces peered at me on my way up. I knocked on the door of the attic at the back and a woman opened it almost at once, though only by a few inches.

  ‘Mistress Sneyd?’

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  She was probably in her forties but she looked older. She was toothless and her face had fallen in. The skin around her eyes was red and swollen. She was respectably dressed in a plain black gown of serge, though the material had faded with age.

  ‘My name’s Marwood,’ I said.

  There was a spark of recognition in her face.

  ‘My father is Nathaniel Marwood.’

  ‘The printer? But I thought—’

  ‘That he was in prison? No, mistress. They let him out six months ago.’

  ‘I’m glad. But why are you here?’

  ‘I am looking for Master Jeremiah Sneyd.’

  ‘He’s not here.’ She began to close the door. ‘Anyway, he does not concern himself with such things as he did before, he—’

  I planted my foot between the door and jamb. ‘Forgive me, mistress. I mean no harm to you.’

  The pressure on my foot relaxed. The door swung back into the room.

  ‘What does it matter?’ she said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘What does anything matter? You might as well come in.’

  The room was furnished only with a truckle bed, a small table by the window, and two stools. The floor was bare and swept clean.

  Her lip were trembling. ‘Truly the ways of the Lord are mysterious.’

  ‘What’s wrong, mistress?’

  She twisted her hands together as if washing them in invisible water. ‘Nothing. This miserable life.’

  She fell silent. For a moment neither of us spoke. I knew that Williamson wanted me to keep her in ignorance of her husband’s fate and suck her dry of whatever she knew. I couldn’t do it.

 
I took a deep breath. ‘Mistress Sneyd, is your husband a small man, without much fat on him, and with long grey hair and a large mouth?’

  She nodded, her eyes widening.

  ‘And he has a row of pins in his coat, and he carries a Bible in his pocket with his name inside it?’

  ‘Something’s happened to him.’ She took my arm and shook it, as if she would shake the truth out of me. ‘He’s dead. Oh merciful God, he’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was found in the Fleet Ditch by one of the patrols.’

  It seemed wiser not to mention the stab wound, not at this point, or the bound thumbs, but to allow her to assume that her husband had drowned. I expected the poor woman to throw her apron over her head and wail. Or to fling herself onto her knees and pray to her God. Or even hit me. Instead, she turned slowly away and sank down on one of the stools by the table. She stared out of the window. After a moment she began to polish one of the lattices with her fingertip.

  I sat opposite her. ‘I’m sorry. You must have been worried when he didn’t come home.’

  She sniffed but gave no other sign she had heard. I couldn’t see her face. The finger went round and round, squeaking slightly on the glass.

  ‘This is the second day he’s been gone, isn’t it? When did he go out? Wednesday evening?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If only he’d listened to me, he’d still be alive. He should have kept away from old comrades. Like your father.’

  ‘Which comrades?’ I said. ‘One in particular? Someone he’d served with? A soldier?’

  She looked at me now, and her hand dropped away from the window. ‘Someone from the old days. One who believed in God as he did.’

  ‘A Fifth Monarchist,’ I said softly.

  She nodded.

  ‘And who was this comrade, mistress?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me. He said he’d been sworn to secrecy, and that it was better that I should not know. Me! The wife of his bosom.’ She gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘As if he could not trust me.’

  The woman was so distressed that she hardly knew what she was saying. I asked her more questions. Answers spilled out of her, though not in the order of my asking, and sometimes the answers were to questions I had not asked at all.