The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  I put down the pot. The old days. The phrase they kept using, as if it explained all and excused all. Perhaps it did, to them, and to my father when he remembered what the old days were. But it didn’t explain or excuse anything to me.

  ‘This needn’t go further than us, Master Marwood, need it? I have tried to act for the best, indeed I have, and – and nowadays the King, for all his shortcomings, has no more loyal subject than myself.’

  ‘If you tell me everything,’ I said, ‘if you hold nothing back, and if we can find the girl unharmed – well, in that case perhaps this can remain between us. But if not …’

  I was beginning to understand how Lovett worked. He had survived in England for at least ten weeks with the support of a network of people who had known and respected him in the old days. People who had shared at least some of his beliefs, who had served him or prayed with him or fought beside him. His old servant, Jem, had been one of them, Sneyd had been another, and probably Mother Grimes a third. Add to that the anonymous workman at St Paul’s and Hakesby himself. And God alone knew who else.

  I stared at Hakesby, trying to make out his expression in the dim light, my mind turning and creaking fit to break like the sails of a windmill in a gale. ‘We must find her, sir. At once. She’s not long gone.’

  I wasn’t sure how much Mistress Noxon knew – probably she had sheltered Cat for her uncle’s sake. But, if in the old days she had shared his loyalties, perhaps that was why Master Hakesby had come to lodge with her in the first place.

  ‘A moment, sir. A moment, I beg you.’

  You couldn’t call these people conspirators. As far as possible, I suspected, Lovett had kept most of them in ignorance of one another, and in ignorance of his real purpose in returning to England. Nor would they have known what he had become during his years of exile, and the means he was willing to adopt in the hope that his actions would bring about the reign of King Jesus.

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ I said. ‘We must look for the girl, not sit here talking.’

  ‘The girl,’ he said. He still didn’t move. ‘You’re right, Master Marwood – she’s what matters now. Master Lovett said he’d come to London to collect her. After all, she’s his child, and a child should be with her father.’

  ‘Not all children,’ I said harshly. ‘And not all fathers. So Lovett knew she might have gone back to Mistress Noxon’s, and that you lodged there as well?’

  Hakesby nodded. ‘He’d been to Three Cocks Yard already – on Saturday, when Mistress Noxon told him his daughter was at the coffee house. So he followed her there and removed her. But it seems that Jane – Mistress Catherine, that is, but I still think of her as Jane – ran away from the house where her father took her. He thought she might have gone back to Mistress Noxon’s.’

  I wanted to pick Hakesby up and shake him. ‘When did you talk to Lovett?’

  ‘I told you – yesterday. He came up to me when I was inspecting the work in the cathedral. I didn’t know him at first – he’s much changed, and he was dressed as a common labourer. He thanked me for helping him find shelter, albeit without my knowing it was him I was helping. And then he begged me to say if I had news of his daughter. So today, when she came here, I – I thought it best to search him out and tell him where she was. A child should be with her father … But I didn’t realize he would come so quickly, before it was night. I thought we’d reach her before he did.’

  He raised his face to me and the light from the lantern fell on it. His eyes shone with unshed tears. ‘I told Lovett where to find her, that she was here in this room, and how to get here. I was wrong to do that. But I thought a child should be with her—’

  ‘How did he get back in St Paul’s?’

  ‘There would be no difficulty if he was with the man who was helping him. The workmen were still passing in and out at that hour.’

  I considered. ‘At least Lovett’s not expecting you back here until the morning. Which means that she may still be here, still in St Paul’s. Where would he take her?’

  Hakesby raised his arm and pointed towards the high places of the abandoned church. ‘Somewhere up there, probably. Unless there’s a vault I don’t know of. Nobody goes above ground unless they’ve no choice – the building’s not safe, you see, even with the scaffolding we’re putting up inside. The tower sways in strong winds. Stones fall every day. But Lovett worked here a great deal before the war – even as a boy, with his father, who was one of Inigo Jones’s principal masons. He knows the place as well as anyone does, and he’ll know the risks, too.’

  I calculated the implications. Lovett must have approached this room from the second door, from the cloister gallery. ‘How did Lovett reach this chamber?’

  ‘Assuming he came from the cathedral? It must have been from the gallery beyond that door. It would take a man of strong nerve, though.’

  ‘They’re not long gone,’ I said. ‘The pot has been recently used.’

  Hakesby pushed back his chair and stood up with some difficulty, as though his limbs were no longer entirely his to command. He said, in a steady voice, ‘Then we must look for her at once, sir. This is my fault, and I must try to set it right as best I can.’

  We could not use the door leading to the gallery, because Lovett had barred it on the other side. So I led the way back down the steps to the shed, where the leather curtain still masked the door from the shed to the cloister below the upper gallery. At Hakesby’s suggestion, we found and lit a second lantern.

  I held the curtain aside while he sorted through his bunch of keys.

  ‘The common people say they have seen ghosts here since the Fire,’ he said. ‘The people who died, the ones whose bodies weren’t found. They are searching for their mortal remains, for how can they rise up on Judgement Day and greet our Redeemer without them?’

  I said nothing. A childhood full of this sort of talk had inured me to it, as a dose of pox or measles inures a man to future infection.

  A rush of air greeted us as Hakesby pushed open the door. The air was cold and damp, smelling of old fires, stone dust and charnel houses.

  ‘I’ve never been here by night,’ he whispered.

  We picked our way along the cloister to the place where the remains of the south door were still propped against the wall. I paused on the threshold. Both of us shaded our lanterns under our cloaks. I waited, listening to Hakesby’s breathing at my shoulder, until the darkness was no longer uniform. One by one, a few stars appeared, far above our heads.

  I whispered to Hakesby: ‘You know the way. Lead us to the crossing. As quietly as possible.’

  It was then, as we advanced slowly into the ruins, I realized how immense and foolhardy was this undertaking. The floor was much clearer than it had been when I was last here, but there were still piles of stone and heaps of rubble scattered about, their outlines hardly visible in the lantern light. Pillars loomed like the trunks of mighty oaks. The jagged outlines of windows were no more than memories of what they had once been.

  The cathedral seemed even larger than by daylight. Almost all the roof had gone. You could no longer tell with any certainty where St Paul’s ended and the night sky began.

  Our progress was painfully slow. I kept the lantern under the shelter of my cloak, allowing only a square of light to fall on the floor before us. I did not know we had reached the crossing until I felt Hakesby’s hand on my arm, drawing me to a stop.

  Here we were, at the heart of the building, where the nave and choir met the transepts below the central tower. The wind moved above and around us, creating the strange illusion that the cathedral was breathing.

  ‘We cannot search the whole place,’ Hakesby whispered. ‘They could be anywhere.’

  He was right, and we both knew it. You would need half a company of soldiers to comb the whole building at ground level and explore the galleries and staircases above ground, as well as whatever lay beneath. You would need people who knew the cathedral as they knew their own parlour to e
xamine all the places where refugees might hide. You would need to set guards at any possible points of escape. Above all, you would need daylight.

  ‘We must pray for a miracle,’ Hakesby said.

  It was just the sort of remark my father would have made. Dear God, I thought, my life is haunted by these religious fools.

  Perhaps I should go to Whitehall, tell Chiffinch everything, and persuade him to talk to the King. If the King ordered it, the Foot Guards could seal off the entire ruin for the rest of the night and then search it properly by daylight. But Lovett and his daughter might have left by the time the soldiers came, if they hadn’t left already. Besides, the City authorities would need to be consulted, and the last thing the King would want was to make public his pursuit of Thomas Lovett.

  At that moment, I heard the chink of metal on stone. Hakesby gasped. I nearly dropped the lantern. The sound was high and surprisingly musical, the chink of impact followed by a brief, scuttling clatter, as the object came to rest.

  Everything changed at a stroke. Something had fallen from the sky. It had landed, by the sound of it, about three yards away from where we were standing.

  I crouched and played the beam of the lantern over the blackened flagstones until I found Master Hakesby’s miracle. It took the form of a small dagger.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  ‘THAT WAS MY dagger you made me drop,’ her father said, releasing her wrist.

  Simultaneously, as she regained her balance, Cat said, ‘Uncle Alderley? What’s he—’

  ‘Henry Alderley is an abomination in the sight of the Lord,’ Master Lovett said, his voice acquiring the cadences of the pulpit. ‘A coward. A thief. A …’

  He spat. The wind caught it, and she felt flecks of his spittle on her cheek.

  ‘But how does he come here, sir?’

  ‘Because I brought him, with the help of a friend in Jesus. First we carried him in a wagon, and then persuaded him at the point of a dagger, the one that has fallen. Here, in this high place, he will understand what it is to be a man of such sin: a man who takes so much from Caesar that he forgets what he owes to God.’

  She tried to bring her father back from the divine to mundane. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘In the tower of St Paul’s, of course. At the very top. At the highest place in this degenerate city.’

  ‘Is it – is it safe?’

  ‘Safe?’ he cried. ‘Nowhere is safe, child. Not on this earth. But we are in God’s hands, you and I, and He will bring us to Him in His own good time.’

  ‘I don’t want to fall, sir. Not before my time.’ Or indeed at any time, she thought, including God’s.

  ‘Then mind your step and trust in the Lord. The roof has gone, of course, but the walls are mostly sound. There’s some scaffolding below us but nothing else. Keep close to the parapet and you’ll be on the wall-walk. It’s about six feet wide, but in places it is partly fallen. Feel your way before you put your weight on anything. The parapet is crumbling, so be careful there as well. We’re on the west side now. The east side is particularly bad.’

  Cat felt for the parapet and ran her hand up to the top. It was about four or five feet high. She could see over it, but only just. There were no battlements here, she remembered, only a plain line of coping stones that projected slightly from the outer face of the tower.

  ‘There’s a chamber at the north-east corner,’ he said, his breath warm against the tip of her ear. ‘Made of stone and built into the angle where the walls meet. It was built for the roofers when the spire was still here.’

  ‘Are we going there now, sir?’

  ‘Yes. We can shelter there for a time. Alderley? Stand up.’

  The moaning grew louder. Her father had covered the lantern. She did not see him stepping around her so much as hear him, and feel the displacement of the air as he passed.

  He stooped, dragged her uncle to his feet and propped him against the wall. ‘Stop your groaning,’ he ordered. ‘I’m going to take out the gag. If you shout for help, two things will happen. No one will hear except us. And I will break one of your fingers.’

  Her father wrenched out the gag. ‘Move along in front of us.’

  Uncle Alderley retched. He tried to speak but failed.

  ‘Move!’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Tom. I beg you.’

  Cat would not have recognized her uncle’s voice. It was thin, purged of vitality like an old man’s, almost drowned by the wind. It had lost all trace of authority. She could not see him except as a blur, but he was oddly hunched over, as if he had acquired a crooked back since he had last seen her.

  ‘Pity, Henry? Is that what you gave me?’

  ‘Forgive me. For the love of God. For your poor dead sister’s sake, my poor dead wife who loved us both.’

  ‘After what you’ve done? Why should I?’

  Her uncle’s voice rose to a wail. ‘I’m afraid of falling.’

  ‘I know,’ her father said. ‘You were so scared of heights that you would not go out on the roof of your house with me to see the stars. My sister told me you whimpered like a child at the very thought of it. Do you remember that? Edward was very little then, and Catherine had not been born.’

  He prodded Alderley’s arm, forcing him to shift along the wall-walk. He prodded again and again, like a farmer goading a reluctant cow. The three of them shuffled slowly along the parapet, with London turning below in time with their footsteps. Uncle Alderley went first, weeping, edging sideways with his back to the emptiness inside the tower; he stopped after every pace and clung to the top of the parapet.

  ‘Go on, you coward.’

  ‘The sky is pressing down on me,’ Uncle Alderley cried. ‘I shall fall, Tom.’

  ‘You’ll fall if you don’t move,’ her father said cheerfully, ‘because I’ll push you off. Two hundred feet down? Two hundred and fifty? And at the bottom the Devil will be waiting for you.’

  They came at last to the narrow doorway in the north-west corner of the tower. There was no door. Three steps led down into a small stone enclosure, crudely vaulted with rubble. Uncle Alderley collapsed on the floor in the corner where the walls of the tower met.

  Her father uncovered the lantern and placed it in a niche to the right of the doorway. He opened it only enough to allow a dim light to fill the space where they were. It was safe enough, Cat supposed, for there were no windows in the outer walls, and they were probably invisible even from below, underneath the crossing.

  Uncle Alderley lay gasping for breath, heaving dry sobs from somewhere deep inside himself. He was lying on his side. His hands had been tied behind his back, which gave him his hunched appearance.

  Not his hands, Cat saw, as her eyes adjusted to the growing light. His thumbs.

  ‘You think I’m cruel?’ her father said to her. ‘I have reason to be, certainly, but I am not. I am the sharp sword in the Lord’s right hand. I bring justice in His name. It was your uncle who betrayed me at the Restoration, despite his promises to do all he could to help us.’

  ‘Oh Tom,’ her uncle groaned, ‘they made me do it. I swear it.’

  ‘I thought your uncle a godly man once, Catherine. But the only god he worships is himself. He told those Royalist scum where to find me. I did not know this until my servant Jem uncovered the secret last year. It was only by the grace of God that I escaped. They gave him my house and the yard in the City for his treachery, and the King has shown him favour ever since and even gave him as a wife one of his own cast-off adulterous whores in place of my sister. Men praised him for taking you in – you, the daughter of a Regicide. It was a proof of his magnanimity, they said, of his sense of justice.’

  He turned and kicked the man on the floor in the stomach. Henry Alderley shrieked, straining against his tied thumbs. His body twisted into an untidy, pulsing bundle.

  ‘That’s justice,’ her father said. ‘Mark it well, Catherine. But it is nothing to what will happen to him at the Last Judgement. He served Parliament when it was prof
itable to do it, then Cromwell, and now he thinks he serves the King. But his true master is the Devil himself. What does it matter that he has stolen Coldridge from you as well? True, it’s lost for ever. But it will do him no good, and he will not enjoy the fruit of his evil. We shall see to that at least.’

  ‘What will you do to him, sir?’

  ‘You shall see.’

  ‘Sir,’ Alderley whispered. ‘I beg you, listen to me. You and my niece shall have gold, all the gold I have and all I can borrow. I’ll sign a confession, whatever you ask. But spare me, I pray you.’ He was speaking more and more quickly, and the flow of words became a torrent. ‘And I sold Coldridge only for your sake, Catherine, because Sir Denzil has debts and we needed to pay them off as a price of your marriage. I—’

  ‘Sir Denzil is dead,’ her father said. ‘Thanks be to God. There will be no marriage now.’

  Cat’s mouth was dry. Her stomach heaved. At first she couldn’t find the words for what she had to say. When she could, her lips were reluctant to frame them. ‘Will you kill him, sir?’

  ‘I need not soil my hands with his death, child,’ her father said. ‘Unless I want to. I might let the King his master kill him instead. Hang him at Tyburn. Draw out his bowels while he yet lives. Hack him into quarters. Cut off his sinful head and let it rot on a spike.’

  ‘Why?’ She stared at him, wondering if his wits had finally run away with him. ‘Why would the King of all people wish my uncle dead and dishonoured?’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE was in the north transept, to the east of the great north door. It was, Hakesby said, the best preserved of all the staircases, and it offered the safest way to reach the tower. In the daytime, the scaffolders also used a system of ladders, whose position changed according to where they were working; but these were removed at the end of the day.

  ‘This dagger,’ I said. ‘It could be anyone’s. We can’t be sure it was dropped by Lovett or his daughter.’