The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘But who else could be up there? Lovett can’t leave the cathedral until daylight. The watchmen never go above ground, so he would calculate they would not be disturbed.’

  I glanced up into the darkness. ‘But there’s nothing left up there. Nowhere for them to go. The floors are gone.’

  ‘They could be on the stairs. Or at the top, even. There’s a little chamber up there, for the roofers, within the angle of the wall.’

  I told myself that it was the cold making me shiver. ‘Have you been there yourself, sir? Since the Fire, I mean.’

  ‘No,’ Hakesby said. ‘The timbers and the leads have gone, of course, but I’m told that the walls remain, and to their full height. Parts of the parapet are a little damaged. Still, I’m assured it’s quite safe, if you look alert and move with care.’

  ‘By daylight,’ I said.

  He gave a little cough, the sort a man makes when embarrassed. ‘Of course. By daylight.’

  At first it was easy. The treads of the staircase were level, shallow and broad. At the top was a short passage in the thickness of the wall that brought us to triforium level above the vault covering the east side of the transept, where there had once been chapels. Part of the vault had collapsed, but the scaffolders had constructed a walkway of planks supported by poles. It led south, toward the tower at the crossing.

  ‘Pray let me take your arm,’ Hakesby said. ‘I feel unsteady.’

  His fingers trembled on my arm as we picked our way slowly along the walkway to the staircase at the far end. I was half expecting what happened next.

  Hakesby stopped at the archway before the stairs. His fingers tightened their grip. ‘Forgive me, Master Marwood,’ he whispered. ‘I’m ill. I lack the strength to climb further.’

  ‘I can’t go alone,’ I said. ‘I don’t know the way.’

  ‘I would come if I had the strength, sir. I swear it. I will … I will go for help instead.’

  ‘Where?’ I said. ‘To Whitehall where no one knows you? Will you talk to the King? Will you turn out the Guards?’

  He turned his head away. I intended the sarcasm to wound, and it had. ‘Consider, sir. Mistress Lovett doesn’t know me. It’s you she trusts.’

  ‘I can’t go up there.’ He was squeezing my arm so hard that I tried to pull it away from him. ‘Find her,’ he whispered. ‘Bring her safely to me. I beg you.’

  For a moment neither of us spoke. I covered my lantern. The sincerity in his voice was unmistakable. Like Mistress Alderley, Hakesby seemed to care for the girl for her own sake.

  I listened to his breathing, which was fast and shallow as if he had just run a race. Apart from that, there was nothing but the darkness, the murmuring wind and the smell of fear.

  Fear had one advantage, at least. It sharpened the senses.

  I smelled burning. Someone had recently come up or down the stairs with a light. My nose had become so miraculously acute that it could distinguish between the smell of my lantern and this other smell, which seemed to me to have a faint but disagreeable hint of old fish.

  The second staircase was narrower and in worse condition than the first. Step by step, I climbed higher in the tower, trying to move as quietly as I could. I shone the lantern only on the tread immediately in front of me. In my other hand I carried the dagger that had fallen at our feet.

  I soon lost track of how far I had climbed. Occasionally there were ventilation slits in the outer wall of the staircase, but they revealed little of the world outside. I passed vacant arches which had once led to chambers within the tower, but which now led to nothing whatsoever.

  My skin was clammy with sweat, though the air was growing colder the higher I climbed. I was sorely tempted to turn back. But if I did, then Lovett might easily escape arrest, and Catherine with him. And I would be held responsible.

  I did not like to dwell on what Chiffinch’s displeasure would mean for myself, and for my father. Also, though I hardly dared admit this even to myself, despite the unknown terrors that waited above me, despite my fear, I was dimly aware of my fond, foolish desire to please Mistress Alderley.

  The air freshened and grew colder. Then, as I rounded a turn of the staircase, I saw the faint gleam of a solitary star ahead. I had arrived, though precisely where I did not know.

  I masked the lantern completely. I paused to listen at each remaining step, feeling with my hand for the next one. I heard nothing except the wind, which was much stronger than it had been below.

  I came to another archway, this one so low that I had to crouch to pass through it. On the other side, I risked a flash of the lantern and stood up. The wind caught my cloak and set it billowing inward, towards the empty centre of the tower. I clutched at the parapet to steady myself. The calcined surface of the stone crumbled a little beneath my fingers. But the parapet itself held firm.

  Above my head was the dome of the sky, filled with scudding clouds and, here and there, a sprinkling of stars. I was standing at one corner of the tower. I ignored the darkness to my right and let my gaze move along the parapet. It was then that I saw another, even smaller archway, this one filled with faint, dingy light.

  Until then, I had thought it possible – likely, even – that I would find no one up here, that even if Lovett had been here, he would have somehow contrived to flee from St Paul’s with his daughter. If I were honest with myself, part of me had hoped that it might be so, which would mean that I could return to Hakesby with honour satisfied.

  I edged, step by step, along the top of the wall towards this second archway. The wind would mask the sound of my approach, I calculated, but I could not rid myself of the idea that someone was in the darkness, that someone was watching me.

  The distance between me and the doorway slowly shrank.

  Not too late to turn back, I thought. No one will ever know. I’ll say the tower was empty, and they must have fled already.

  But I went on and on, one foot following after the other, as if following the implacable logic of a dream that had robbed me of my will.

  Then, quite suddenly and inexplicably, I saw my father’s face with my mind’s eye: not my father as he was now, but as he had been when I was a child: immense, infinitely powerful, the source of everything worth having in my life; more godlike than God himself.

  Save me, I thought, I’ve lost my wits.

  My father would not have turned back. Even now, he was not a coward. In his prime, he would have confronted the Devil himself in the mouth of hell.

  I edged closer and closer until I was standing in the doorway, looking into the small chamber that lay beyond. I uncovered the lantern and held it high.

  Three people were staring wide-eyed at me as if I were the ghost of Bishop Braybrooke himself. Henry Alderley was on the left, slumped in the corner, his face filthy and haggard, and his arms pulled behind his back.

  The thumbs are tied, I thought. The thumbs again. As recommended for the damned on their way to hell in God’s Fiery Furnace.

  A man I didn’t recognize towered over the others in the middle of the room, his head nearly touching the ceiling at its highest point. Thomas Lovett. He was older than I had expected, and dressed in a labourer’s clothes, but he was tall and upright; he had a face as hard and sharp as a hatchet, and he was glaring at me.

  The third was the boy–girl who had bitten my hand and stolen my cloak on the night that St Paul’s burned. She too was staring at me, but without hostility or indeed any expression that I could detect on her face. She was smaller than I remembered, smooth-skinned but somehow ageless, with delicate, clearly defined features that might have belonged to a child or an old woman.

  Time passed. A second? Half a minute? Now I had found them, now I had found Catherine Lovett, I simply did not know what to do.

  The boy–girl let out her breath in a long sigh, as if she had been holding it too long for comfort.

  I took off my hat and bowed. ‘God give you good evening, Mistress Lovett. My name is Marwood.’

&nb
sp; The frozen moment shattered.

  Thomas Lovett was upon me before I had time to move. He gripped my wrist, twisting it, until I dropped both hat and dagger. I tried to clout the side of his head with the lantern but he caught my arm and forced it backwards. Old though he was, my strength was no match for his. The lantern fell, rolling onto its side. The flame died.

  Lovett kicked the dagger into the chamber behind him. He wrapped his hands around my neck and pushed me backwards, away from the doorway. I could do little to resist him. He was taller and heavier than I was, and he had the advantage of surprise.

  One step back. Then another. A second later, I realized his intention: behind me was the long drop into the empty heart of the tower.

  His daughter appeared suddenly beside me. She grabbed his left arm and tried to tug him away from me. ‘Father! Father! Let him go, sir!’ She hit his arm with the open palm of her free hand. ‘He helped me.’

  Lovett’s hands relaxed, though he kept them lightly laced around my neck. ‘Marwood?’ he said slowly, as if the name had only just penetrated his mind. ‘Marwood?’

  I sucked a breath of air, which led me to a fit of coughing. When I could speak, I said, ‘Yes, Marwood, sir. The son of Nathaniel Marwood of Pater Noster Row.’

  ‘Marwood, yes,’ he echoed, his hands dropping away from me. ‘I remember. The printer.’

  ‘You met him in Alsatia, sir. I fear he’s not the man he was.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I understood that.’

  ‘He suffered much in his years of imprisonment.’ I had no other plan than to keep Lovett talking to me. ‘He’s in his dotage now, come to it early, and quite ruined.’

  ‘He will have his reward,’ he proclaimed. ‘There is a place in heaven for men like him, on God’s right hand.’

  This was not the moment to remind him that he had pushed my father down and left him weeping in the gutter.

  ‘But he still has his lucid moments, sir,’ I said, ‘and he’s often urged me to assist his old comrades as best I can.’ I decided that I might as well be hanged for an old sheep as a young lamb. ‘In the name of King Jesus.’

  ‘But you work at Whitehall,’ Mistress Lovett said, her voice sharpening.

  ‘An informer?’ Her father’s hands reached for me again. ‘And a traitor.’

  I dared not move backwards. Somewhere behind me was that drop into darkness. ‘There are many at Whitehall whose loyalties lie elsewhere,’ I said hastily. ‘And we are all the more useful there because of it.’

  Lovett’s hands settled on my shoulders. Once again I felt the pressure he was exerting, pushing me backwards. ‘How have you come here? How did you know where we were?’

  ‘Why, sir, because Master Hakesby told me you would be here.’

  I felt something shift below my left foot. I flung myself forward. Lovett’s hands gripped harder.

  Nearer the edge, the walkway was not secure. The stone itself was crumbling under my weight. From far below came the sound of fragments of stone pattering on the ground.

  ‘I nearly lost my footing, sir,’ I said, trying to keep my voice low and reasonable, as if this were a minor, everyday hazard of this place, not the result of a potentially murderous assault on me.

  The pressure slackened a little.

  ‘Master Hakesby knew you must have taken your daughter from the Chapter Clerk’s chamber,’ I went on. ‘He thought it probable you’d be up here. He would have come himself, sir, but he was not well enough for the climb … We must get you away to safety.’

  ‘I don’t trust you,’ Lovett said. ‘And why should I? You are not your father.’

  There was no answer to that. The pressure of his hands began to increase again. I tried to divert him. ‘I hadn’t expected you to have company, sir.’

  ‘Company?’

  His attention on me slackened, and so did his grip.

  ‘Master Alderley.’

  He frowned, which made me wonder if he had briefly forgotten the very existence of his prisoner. He turned towards the chamber behind him, still dimly lit by Lovett’s lantern within. At that instant there was the scrape of metal on stone, followed by a flurry of shadowy movement.

  Alderley had freed himself. He threw himself forward – not at Lovett or me, but at Mistress Lovett. He wrapped his arms around her legs and brought her down on the walkway, her head hanging over the drop.

  For a moment, none of us moved. The only sound I heard over the wind was Alderley’s ragged gasps, part breathing, part sobbing.

  Lovett released me. He flung himself on Alderley, who was pushing Mistress Lovett towards the edge. She flailed her arms, trying to reach Alderley’s face, but the folds of her cloak impeded her. Lovett sprawled across Alderley, who writhed underneath his weight.

  Suddenly free, I backed away. My foot knocked against something metallic.

  My lantern.

  Mistress Lovett called out. It was a sound without words and it stopped me in my tracks.

  I scooped up the lantern, raised it over my head and swung it down at the two struggling men. I was aiming for Alderley’s head but there was so little light, and the men were moving so much, that I struck him only a glancing blow.

  But it was enough to distract Alderley. He twitched, shifting his body, which gave Mistress Lovett the chance to curl herself under him so that her head was no longer hanging over the drop. His weight fell back on her almost at once but he no longer had her pinned so securely to the ground.

  All this happened so quickly that the events flowed one into the other in a blur of movement. I hit Alderley again, and with better aim. This time he bucked like a restive horse, dislodging Lovett from his back. Mistress Lovett wriggled free.

  Alderley pushed himself onto his feet and edged towards the wall of the parapet.

  There was a sound behind me. I glanced back. Mistress Lovett was standing now, or rather crouching, as if ready to spring. The light from the doorway glinted on something in her hand. She was holding a knife. There was nothing even remotely meek and womanly about her. Indeed, for an instant she seemed not like a member of the human race but a creature of quite another breed that had more to do with sparrow hawks and cats.

  For the length of a heartbeat, I thought of Sir Denzil Croughton dying in a pool of his own blood from a punctured artery, of the mastiff that didn’t bark or bite, and of my own grey cloak hanging on a hedge. But there was no time for that, for anything—

  ‘Father,’ she cried. ‘Have a care—’

  Lovett was trying to scramble up, but his cloak tangled itself around his legs. He tore it away from him at once, but the movement sent him slightly off balance. He managed to stand, but more slowly than he had expected. For a second, he swayed, near the edge of the wall-walk, fighting for equilibrium.

  He steadied himself but not quite soon enough. Alderley took a step forward, placed a hand on Lovett’s chest, and pushed.

  It wasn’t a hard push. There was no urgency to it. Alderley’s movements were unhurried and graceful, like a dancer’s in a pavane.

  Lovett stepped back. His arms were outstretched. The light from the doorway was so dim you could hardly see him. His face was a blur, a mask. He might have been anyone.

  For the length of another heartbeat, nothing moved. Then his arms flailed violently up and down as if he were trying to fly. He cried out, a sound without words. He fell backwards.

  He was no longer there.

  There were no more cries. The world held its breath. A third heartbeat.

  Then the moist slap of flesh, blood and bone on stone.

  Catherine Lovett hissed like a cat.

  There was a flurry of movement beside me. She jabbed her knife upwards, under Alderley’s chin.

  He screamed. She left the knife there. His hands flew to his throat.

  Another flurry of movement. Mistress Lovett was behind Alderley now. She pushed him with one sharp shove.

  Henry Alderley stepped forward into the air. He screamed as he fell.
>
  Mistress Lovett and I were alone at the top of St Paul’s, with the ruins of London around us and no other sound but the wind.

  At first neither of us moved.

  I backed into the doorway, down the steps, feeling my way, and into the chamber. Light, I thought, and a weapon. The other lantern was here. So was the dagger that I had dropped, which Lovett had kicked away from me and into the chamber. It was in the corner where Alderley had been lying. I remembered the scrape of metal on stone, just before he had rushed at Cat. He must have used the dagger to free his thumbs, rubbing the cord that bound them along the edge of the blade, and then dropped it as he scrambled to his feet.

  I picked up the dagger first. The lantern was still in the niche by the door. When I raised it the light fell on Catherine Lovett in the doorway, throwing a ruddy glow on her face. She was wrapped in her cloak, hugging herself and weeping. She seemed oblivious to me.

  ‘Mistress Lovett?’ I said. ‘Mistress Lovett?’

  She stared up at me with wide, startled eyes. We were back where we had been when we had first met, all those weeks ago, as St Paul’s burned down, when the flames had reddened our faces. When she had spat at me and bitten my hand.

  But now I knew she had killed at least two people and maimed a third, her cousin Edward Alderley. At least she had lost her knife.

  ‘Sir,’ she said. Her voice was weak but I sensed she was fighting for control, fighting to contain her grief. She swallowed, moistened her lips and gathered strength and assurance. ‘Sir. You have come to my rescue a second time. This time I suppose I must thank you.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  ONE STEP DOWN. Another step.

  Cat made him lead the way, this thin young man with his high cheekbones and his bright eyes. It was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other. She kept her hand on the outer wall of the staircase, turning slowly and endlessly downwards.

  Marwood. That was his name. She had asked him to remind her of it only a moment ago. But her mind seemed incapable of holding information. A few minutes ago she had been possessed of extraordinary energy and felt capable of anything. Now that unnatural vitality had gone, and she felt exhausted, ill and very cold.